Andreas H. Bitesnich: Mutti

M u t t i
a c o n c e p t u a l w o r k

Memory is a strange thing. We tend to think of ourselves as cameras, recording events which we can truthfully and repeatedly recall without distortion. Yet each time we remember an event, a person, those memories become slowly and inevitably modified. Just as the cells in our bodies replicate to survive and grow, so our memories adapt, looking close to the original here and there, but altering enough to enable us to fit them comfortably into the myths of our individual lives. Our reality is a reproduction of a copy.

If our own lives are already prone to this distortion, what remains of the dead? How much does our faith in the veracity of media interfere and reflect in this process? Photographs can assist in recalling, and even entirely replace, an actual memory, but like our memories they are also prone to the attritional effects of time.

In reevaluating and rephotographing these images of my mother (originally taken by friends or other family members, as well as by myself), the process is emphasized and accelerated. This process, which is slow and often quite unintentional, allows us to create our own history, and yet with each replication of memory the reality behind it fades gradually away. Just like life itself.