Stasia Harrington

Photography, memory, and mortality.

Long prints draped over clothes airers feature five photographs each, all taken using an old analogue camera and several rolls of film that expired in 1991, both handed down to me by a family member. The weight of age and decay resides within these rolls of film, allowing each photograph to become a dialogue with the past, materialising the tension between preservation and decay that takes shape in both photo and memory images. The photographs portray my experience visiting my family home, as I spent time looking, remembering, and feeling, in spaces simultaneously familiar and foreign. The clothes airers suggest an everyday domestic act of exposure and care, while also highlighting the physicality of the photographs, allowing them to operate as objects in the space. As objects, photographs share in memory’s mortality, as they too will fade, distort, and transform over time. Bathed in sunlight, the photographs are installed adjacent to a window, further engaging with the clothing rack's suggested act of exposure while also creating an environment in which the photographs are likely to fade and decay further.