I just finished reading (mostly skimming) Geoffrey Batchen’s Forget Me Not: Photography & Remembrance. Pretty cool. Here’s a passage at the end that got me thinking:
the act of remembering someone is surely also about the positioning of oneself, about the affirmation of one’s own place in time and space, about establishing oneself within a social and historical network of relationships (97).
Batchen
I am certainly motivated by a desire to make sense of my own relationships with generations of Puotinens as I work on this project. How do I fit in? What qualities of character do I share with other Puotinen family members? I’m also interested in rooting myself in a history. Most of the time I feel deeply disconnected from my past selves and past connections. I imagine this project as a way to connect with others and with the chain of selves that I have once been.
For further reading: Forget Me Not: An Interview with Geoffrey Batchen