The Memory of History
(2012)

A nation is a community of individuals united by a collective sense of the past, but the European Union is a community united by a collective amnesia. Countries joining the Union have necessarily traded their difficult memories of past rivalries, wars, genocides, and dictatorships for peace and prosperity, but now the good times are over the past has started to return.

Made across ten countries during the height of the European debt crisis, at a point where the European Union appeared dangerously close to fracturing apart, The Memory of History explores the use and abuse of the past in the context of recession. Through a mixture of overt references and chance juxtapositions, these photographs allude to histories returning both as weaponised political narratives, but also more spectrally, of their volution, haunting a continent which cannot fully forget them.

Rejecting a fixed narrative structure, The Memory of History is housed in a box shaped like a book, containing fifty-six prints alongside an experimental essay, The History of Memory, composed of twelve short texts chapters on perceptions of history, memory and time. Images and text are designed to mix freely, resulting in a unique viewing experience every time the box is opened as new connections form. This emulates the way the reconstitutes itself differently each time we attempt to return to it, and echoes the idea that there is no such thing as the construct we call ‘history’.

Featured in The Week, Photomonitor, Lensculture.com, UAL Alumni News, Hotshoe Magazine, Photoworld China, and The BBC Viewfinder blog.

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