Forget Me Not (Really) | annahalliwell

Forget Me Not (Really) explores lost connections and the distortion of my personal history. Personal photographs and old school notes are some of the visible remains of relationships I have made in my lifetime. These photographs display specific moments with other people, many of whom are no longer in my life. By distorting the individuals and places pictured, I am regarding the erosion of these memories and addressing the disconnect from that moment to present day. The original analog photographs are sanded, erased, and painted on with the intent of creating separation between the figures and the viewer, just as they are now separated from me.

In the other series of my thesis, I am redacting details from my old school notes. The blank spaces I have created in them serve as lapses in memory. These gaps abstract the stories and situations to make them unrecognizable while still hinting at the author’s intent through the handwriting and remaining content. I also produce digitized versions of these notes on Instagram, so that viewers are able to see these obsolete documents on the very device that replaced them – the cell phone.

Forget Me Not (Really) is about the ghosts of our pasts that follow us into the present-- no matter how much time has gone by, and no matter how much we may want to forget.