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Every weekend when I was very young, my parents would load my brother, sister, the dog, and me into the station wagon and set off for the country. We had a small house in southern Missouri where we were free to investigate the woods and creeks to our heart's content. Being little, it was easy to notice the small, almost trivial, details of the environment around me while we explored. As my siblings and I got older, the number of reasons to stay in the city on weekends grew, sports, friends, homework, and we eventually quit going. The land was sold. The house has been torn down. And all we have left are the pictures.
The photos my parents took were pretty straightforward; everyone in front of the house, my brother with some fish, my sister on the tire swing and the like. My memories of the house and the woods are very vague. I'm not sure if what I do remember are my own recollections or derived from the photos I've seen over and over again. I have these snapshot-like memories that I'm not sure ever existed. When I try to remember, it all seems unreliable.
I still love being in the country and am struck by the places that seem so familiar. I know that I wasn't here as a child but the trees, the water, the light all strike a chord. These are the places I've used to create this portfolio. From an original clean, crisp image I degenerate the picture into a memory through a number of manipulations. The random vagueness of these images transform real places I've been as an adult into the memories from thirty years ago.
COPYRIGHT © JENNIFER LINNEA DALY 2011
