what remains after the image

November 14, 2024

I remember being a little girl, getting lost in my dad’s collection of photo albums.

He kept them in this tall cabinet in the corner of the living room. Ceiling to floor. Deep mahogany. It always reminded me of the wardrobe from Narnia. The top half held his record player, stacked with only a fraction of his vinyl. The bottom shelves were filled with albums.

I used to sit there for hours.

I would look at the images and try to place myself inside them.
What was said just before this?
What happened right after?

My favorite albums were the ones of him.

A young boy in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
A teenager in the 80s, shaped by music and movement.
A young man in the 90s. Love, marriage, children.

It was his life, but not in a straight line. Just fragments. Moments that felt small on their own, but together became something whole.

Without realizing it, I was building a version of him through those images. Not just from what I saw, but from what I felt while looking at them.

I think that’s where it started.

Not just an interest in images, but an understanding that they don’t end when they’re taken. They stay with you. They shift. They become something else over time.

Now, when I look back at my own work, I notice the same thing.

Almost every project I’ve created means something different than it did in the moment I made it.

What started as one idea becomes something deeper. Sometimes something I didn’t even have the language for at the time.

There are moments I thought I understood, that only made sense later.

So I’ve learned to step outside of the work and return to it differently.

How does this make me feel now?
Why does it still stay with me?
What did I miss the first time?

I’m still early in my career, but one thing has become clear.

Intention isn’t always present at the beginning. Sometimes it’s something you arrive at after. After time has passed. After distance creates space to actually see.

Images and motion preserve something, but never all of it.

There is always more happening beyond the frame. More than what was seen. More than what was understood in that moment.

And sometimes, what matters most isn’t what was captured, but what continues to live outside of it.

When I think back to those photo albums, I realize now that what stayed with me wasn’t just the images.

It was the feeling of them.
The questions they left me with.
The way they helped me understand someone I was still getting to know.

That’s what I return to in my own work.

Not just what the image shows, but what it holds.
What it carries forward.

Because what remains after the image isn’t always visible.

It’s what stays with you.