Series “Photo-Tropes: Surrogate memories in the Eclipse of Family Histories”, 2023

INSTALLATION PROJECT with a table and chairs, where visitors are invited to sit down and share personal histories while handling the photos in the box.

L. Mikelle Standbridge is a lens based artist who considers the role and nature of Photography as she works through its potential and sometimes simultaneously usurping powers of imagination and memory. In her series, ”Photo-Tropes: Surrogate memories in the Eclipse of Family Histories” she addresses what seems to be an almost complete takeover of the oral tradition of family life by cell phone photography (which often means unedited, unorganized, and not printed). Photography today is probably doing more to harm than help storytelling and the inter-generational transmission of family legacies.

Typically in the past a few dozen prints were stored in a shoebox and periodically brought out to handle and pass back and forth, where the family member narrating was the animator behind otherwise mute portraits or scenery.

In an effort to process photography as an ubiquitous force in our daily lives, and to take advantage of its inherent quality of referencing the world at hand, this series relies on a familiarity of imagery, as if we as a collective already know or have already seen these photographs. The idea is to take for granted known visual content, to then, from that archetypal family album, practice filling in and recounting specifically personal experiences. It’s not necessary at this point to rely on actual family photos, as plenty already exist. The diptych made of photograph and text is designed to push even harder on the dislodgement of memory from latency or to trigger new emotions through combinations of mediums.

Standbridge also relies on haptics to invoke connections and sensations, as her prints are waxed to provide a patina, stuffed, stitched, and free standing. The tactile character speaks of presence (a stand-in for the body) as a way of acknowledging the human co-participation in re-living/re-imagining photographic histories.

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L. Mikelle Standbridge, “Virginity” from the series “Shoebox Stories (The Eclipse of Family Histories and Surrogate Memory Tropes)” 2023
25 x 15 x 0,5 cm., Fine Art photography print with patina, stuffed and stitched