Dad I You!
I lost my dad in the summer of 2022, right before my junior year in college. After his passing, I inherited an archive of documents and family photos. During the grieving process, I spent the next year experimenting and creating this archive. I started scanning ripping and rescanning old documents and photographs and deconstructing them in Photoshop. I ultimately landed on the digital collage format you can see below. this collection of photographic collages contains 25 compositions that all build off one another and read as a timeline. Each composition was printed 2'x 2'making the final display 50ft long. This project features everything from his kindergarten report card to the random sporadic texts he would send me during the last two years of our estranged relationship. These compositions bring you into the experience of having a bipolar parent with substance addictions, including the account of their heartbreaking death. I aimed for these compositions to read as a timeline of his life and our relationship. In sharing my process of grief I hope to provide some solace in the silence of others who may be facing challenging relationships. (for best viewing experience view on desktop)
The following year I explored creating transcriptions of every document displayed in the digital collages. During the early grieving process, while I was creating the compositions, aspects of the story, and documents, were still being hidden to properly articulate our relationship. Not every aspect of the compositions was readable. Using elements of book, publication, and document design I reconstructed the deconstructed documents featured in the colleges. This second part of the project aims to plainly and elegantly display the black-and-white transparency of our story and separate from the stigma behind these topics.
Following the creation of the transcriptions I compiled both parts of this project into a hardcover book. As this project is still ongoing, The form of this project is still being explored and always changing.
In early 2024 the collages, book, and watches were featured in a group show "After Everything" in the Hokin Project Gallery. "What comes after a loss, systematic failure, a jarring change? Will it all remain, will it all be transformed, or will it be anything at all?" Each collage was printed at 2' by 2' and hung in a 5x5 grid the installation was 10'x10'. Next to the big display were small prints of his watches hanging above a pedestal with the hardcover book. It's overwhelming seeing it at this scale.
Wrapping my time up at Columbia College Chicago, I wanted to print and bind an updated version of my book. This was my senior seminar project for my photography degree. I skipped a few classes to go to D'Amato's bookmaking workshops to finish this project. This method of bookbinding brings a level of personality to this project that was missing in the first manufactured version. I printed 112 pages, 14 signatures, on double-sided matte paper and then hand bound them with binders thread. The cover was printed on watercolor paper. I love how it turned out, ready for the next one.
