Fabrications of the Truth

Using digital tools and Polaroid film, this portfolio reconstructs past memories combining recent images with childhood snapshots. The result is seemingly realistic images of events that never happened but the images reflect emotions from my childhood.

I was born in England and in 1997, lived in England for five months and I decided to explore my memories of the place where I was born and lived for the first eleven years of my life. On returning to America and looking at my negatives, I realized that I linked my memories of England to memories of my father who died a year after returning to India from England. I was thirteen. I also noted that 1998 was twenty years since his death. I wanted my work of England to commemorate this. The work that has evolved is a reconstruction of memories using parts of snapshots from my childhood combined with recent images. 

This is a small handmade accordion book where the images are presented as Polaroid emulsion to emphasize the fluid feeling of memory. Some pages also include text. To reinforce the fact that my father died of smoking, the book is presented in a cigarette box and the cover is made from a paper made from tobacco leaves. This paper has been stained with tobacco juice so the viewer has the experience of sight, touch and smell. The pages of the book are made from a delicate handmade paper that makes the images and experiences seem very fragile.