She sits on the floor, surrounded by these albums and the photos she has pulled from them. She says she likes to play a game, shuffling old snapshots (seconds, fractions of seconds the camera’s shutter opened and shut). then trying to piece together a narrative. Portraits stolen from the past, decontextualized and recontextualized next to landscapes from years later, or earlier. 72 pictures from a life. Now tell a story.
She wades through make-believe memories, supposition and conjecture tickling her ankles like the flowers did to you: Tuolumne Meadow, age 6. Right, see? She holds one up. Another one: Mom, you two boys, Gramma - not quite posed, not quite centered, in the woods? (He knew, didn’t he, it’s in the grin. Mom didn’t, you didn’t. Gramma, no way.)
The next picture different than the last, robbed of its details... no, actually, the details remain intact - photos can’t lie - but your knowledge of what’s outside the frame is disregarded. You were out West, right? and that was taken in a campground, before dinner. Not a logical accretion, but a back and forth - seasons reversing then reversing again, heads spinning left then right. Shadows lengthen then shorten, and yesterday’s sunlight chases them away.
Memories are passages, pictures punctuation.
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