Creating A Memory

I'm taking a class in visual storytelling. We recently watched the film "After Life" that was about this idea where when you die you go to a place where you get to spend a week deciding what memory you would like to take with you into the after life. The newly departed spend a week thinking about what their most important memory is that they would like to remember and it is recreated for them just like a movie being filmed on a set. I was asked to think of a memory from my life and to recreate it in a similar way.

One of my fondest memories involves my 10th birthday when I received a 22 rifle for a present. As a kid we spent almost every weekend camping, fishing, and hunting. When I received my very own rifle I felt so proud and grown up. When my great aunt and uncle passed away all of our outdoor activities stopped. The last time I handled a rifle was when I was 16. My father and I used to love to go hunting just to go for a hike in the crisp fall air. We never shot anything and I have never killed a deer, but the memories are so special to me.

I asked my parents to come down to my property to recreate this memory. I used my son to stand in for me. My father still had my old 22 rifle so we were able to put together images that feel so real and yet are totally staged. My dad used to wear a wool hunting hat and I used to borrow his filson wool coat. They're both gone now but I did have my dad wear my wool hat and my son wore one of my flannel shirts. You can just make out that the shirt is just a little big on him.

The black and white photographs create a sense of nostalgia and look as though they could have been taken back in 1979. After creating the images of the shooting my family and I sat around the dining table and I decided to photograph my son and parents with the beautiful window light filtering through the late afternoon. I think the image of my son standing proudly against the chair expresses the pride I felt on that special birthday. Afterwards, I printed out some of the images and thought of how I could encapsulate the whole experience by photographing my hand holding the nostalgic photograph.

Photography is not reality, but it is a way of representing our memories with tremendous detail in a way that let's us take only what we want to recall with us.