About This Project

Justin Carney

And the disappearing has become questions what it means when one’s memories fade after the death of a loved one and how this forgetting affects a person. There is a fear that one day I will forget my family’s faces, their laugh, and how it felt to be next to them. What will become of me when they pass, and I am the one left behind? The project uses photography, mono-printing techniques, and erasing with sandpaper to embody the process of forgetting. The gestural act of sanding and painting works to claim this unconscious process of forgetting as an innate part of life rather than as something harmful. Although bodies and memories dissolve, the ones we love will forever remain etched into the fabric of our being. Form may change but it does not disappear. The work that I share is grief work, it is mourning, it is the healing process. I share this project as a gesture of seeing each other. By seeing how others go through similar things, one feels less alone in grief. Through sharing my own struggles to cope with my family’s death, the photographs open a door for conversation about death and healing.

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