Like this:

A moment, after entering through the lens and committed to a medium (film, paper or the digital realm), exists beyond memory. It becomes part of the reality of every person who views it. And unless destroyed (physical photographs) it cannot not be recommitted solely to past of the one who’s moment it originally was. A fair warning for those posting on Facebook!
 
Anyone who has been with the archive long enough begins to create their own relationship with those who are captured in the photos. Voyeurism? A desire to feel like a “part” of the lives of those depicted because we feel so disconnected to our own moment by moment existence (an ordinary day indeed!)? Edna’s act of maintaining this record and our ultimate acceptance of these found moments into our lives raises many questions.
 
How different is our relationship to Edna from the relationships to the “friends of friends of friends” on facebook who we have never met? I know nothing about Edna as a person, and yet when audience members who were part of her life attend the show, I feel a strange urge to “re-connect” with lost family.
 
Was Becka’s grandfather’s reaction a response to a still raw moment in his life, or was it a desire as patriarch to protect his family from eyes that may not be as charitable to them as they should be?

~Mark Walton

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