300 cyanotype handkerchiefs

 

"Papa always carried them; and I ironed them," she told me. I asked my grandmother what a handkerchief meant to her - she told me there was a lot of sadness. She told me that she still had his wallet, with everything in it - everything in place; as if he might come back and wonder where it had been. I asked her why there was so much sadness surrounding an ordinary object, and she answered me simply. "They wipe away your tears."

 

Objects have a distinct, spiritual power over us that we cannot always see. Because they have been handled by or passed down by someone we love, they begin to take on a new function; an ability. Whatever I can get my hands on, any pieces of what I remember, I try to secure. Each time a memory is recalled it is even further from the truth, but it is, nonetheless, a truth we continue to hang onto. When our minds betray us, when our loved ones fade away - parts of them will live on, embedded within the things they left behind. And the best part is, that we can still hold them.

 

i really was there; i was never really there.