Lynne Breitfeller

After the Fire: Water Damaged, explores photographs as memory by examining the shape-shifting potential of altered images. As a result of a fire above my studio, water impacted my negatives destroying a third of my archive. Much was discarded, but I retained a collection of the work.

During the pandemic, I rediscovered the kept artifacts. Water on emulsion transformed their compositions and morphed the remains into new forms and meanings shaped by happenstance.

By working with the damaged pieces, I came to terms with the loss of my photographic legacy and saw the images anew. The memory of what was had shifted into something different. Our experience of remembering the past can change each time it is revisited, it is elastic.

This series made me consider ideas of transience and new incarnations, the impermanence of possessions, and memory.

Website www.lynnebreitfeller.com