ALIVE, A LIFE, A LIGHT, 2025

An expanded cinema performance of four slide projectors showing a family’s photographic archive and photographs of my writing.

An aging couple in the Chicago suburbs gave away their personal archive of family photographs to a stranger, discarding of hundreds of slide film photographs from the 1950s and 60s. I bring this archive to life in a slide-show installation and accompanying performance, asking: Why do we photograph our lives? Are photographs alive? If so, what is the lifespan of a photograph, of an archive? These questions form the thread of an accompanying poetic essay. I photograph my writing, print it on transparency, and turn it into slides – allowing myself, and my questions, to both respond to and physically enter the archive. 

This project was part of the Chicago Cluster Project exhibition “Don’t Make Photographs, Think Them," March 28 - April 27, 2025

Press: Lenscratch, Chicago Gallery News, F-Stop Magazine

Documentation by Eugene Tang