Extensions

In a world full of Others – other individuals, families, neighborhoods, cultures, locations, and times – we remain united in that we’ve all lived, at some point, within a collection of moments. Though each collection must inevitably end, some of these moments remain as photographs – frozen, yet ongoing, in realities layered by the passage of time. The world continues to change outside of the frames, but all lives that pass by contain similar experiences, occupying the same, extending light. Thus, powerful photographs remain so because they are universal – those looking decades later and miles away see something of themselves within images from another’s collection. With this confrontation comes the realization that any presumed differences are meaningless. One is, in fact, the same as all those who have lived before, found within images already lost or forgotten.

This video installation explores the potential of this exchange between various peoples, places, and times, using found photographs from Italian street markets as markers of past existence that can be elongated and explored from within. These images are chosen for their inherent connection to images and memories from my reality, my own impromptu, wandering presence then interwoven into traces of a culture and time very different than my American origins. The process searches through possibilities of ownership and collective existence within this unification and extension of image, driven by an understanding that the fate of those within them, of Others who came before, is something shared.