File not found
Glass, UV Ink
FILE NOT FOUND is an arrangement of 16x20” Glass Sheets printed with UV Ink, custom stand alone Pedestals approximately 45” high and 20” wide. The images are abstracted, glitched semi-transparent photographs; able to be looked through as well as looked at. These works can change based on their environment, lighting and arrangement. Once printed onto this new fragile form, the digital copy is destroyed.
When I began this work in 2014, I thought it was about destruction and the catharsis of taking control over something that held power over me. I had begun digitally breaking down and destroying the hundreds of candid and unique images I had of my friend before his death. I had no use for these images, they weren’t particularly special or comforting and many weren’t even in focus; things you would leave on the cutting room floor had they not contained the image of someone who had died. I understood I wouldn’t be able to take any more photos of him, and for this reason I felt compelled to hoard them. It felt like a decidedly maladaptive response to my fear that I would forget him, and forget my memories.
I knew I wanted to take back the power of these images, prove I could release them. So I began ritualistically destroying them within their code in a defiant act of catharsis. They became abstracted, fractured and sort of beautiful, broken and fragile strings of code, like the memories they held. The thing was, I soon discovered I wasn’t actually able to destroy my relationship to the images, but I could transform them into something new.
Now, over ten years has passed since Ryan’s death, and I understand much more about grief, and now know that when someone you love dies, that relationship isn’t destroyed, only transformed. These images, once objects of my ire, are reminders of an ever-enduring relationship I carry, one that is tenuous, fragile but cannot be destroyed, even by death.
FILE NOT FOUND is an arrangement of 16x20” Glass Sheets printed with UV Ink, custom stand alone Pedestals approximately 45” high and 20” wide. The images are abstracted, glitched semi-transparent photographs; able to be looked through as well as looked at. These works can change based on their environment, lighting and arrangement. Once printed onto this new fragile form, the digital copy is destroyed.
When I began this work in 2014, I thought it was about destruction and the catharsis of taking control over something that held power over me. I had begun digitally breaking down and destroying the hundreds of candid and unique images I had of my friend before his death. I had no use for these images, they weren’t particularly special or comforting and many weren’t even in focus; things you would leave on the cutting room floor had they not contained the image of someone who had died. I understood I wouldn’t be able to take any more photos of him, and for this reason I felt compelled to hoard them. It felt like a decidedly maladaptive response to my fear that I would forget him, and forget my memories.
I knew I wanted to take back the power of these images, prove I could release them. So I began ritualistically destroying them within their code in a defiant act of catharsis. They became abstracted, fractured and sort of beautiful, broken and fragile strings of code, like the memories they held. The thing was, I soon discovered I wasn’t actually able to destroy my relationship to the images, but I could transform them into something new.
Now, over ten years has passed since Ryan’s death, and I understand much more about grief, and now know that when someone you love dies, that relationship isn’t destroyed, only transformed. These images, once objects of my ire, are reminders of an ever-enduring relationship I carry, one that is tenuous, fragile but cannot be destroyed, even by death.