|
Fealty n. Pl. •ties 1. The
obligation of fidelity owed to a feudal lord by his vassal or tenant; also, the
sworn recognition of this obligation. 2. Faithfulness; loyalty. [ < OF feaute,
feaulte < L fidelitas. Doublet of FIDELITY.] |
| Photography is a history of light, capable
of reproducing only what once was. Each year we take millions of photographs of
family and friends, generating evidence of what we will come to remember, years
later, as meaningful moments in our lives. We dutifully save these scraps of
paper, organizing them into plausible narratives to eventually pass to the next
generation. As our stories are told and retold, the corresponding photographs
reveal the shapes of our memory. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, these remnants of the past are irrevocably lost. I scavenge other people's negatives from antique stores and estate sales. Others I find from friends or distantly related family members. Usually the identities of the people in the photographs are unknown to me, yet I cannot help sympathizing with their predicament. They have been abandoned, yet the image, the negative, remains loyal to the circumstances of its creation. By making photographs from these negatives, I hope to reconfigure the past; reanimating their presence so they may once again be felt. These Fealties concern themselves with the awkward tie between fathers and sons. My own father disappeared when I was five years old. As I search my memory for his image I find that photographs of other fathers could just as easily have been of mine. In a culture obsessed with accumulating images, loss, necessarily, is designed by what I have. |
copyright 1998 © James Luckett