Familiar Strangers

Familiar Strangers is a reflection on family history through my father’s archive of old photographs. I chose to engage with this archive to discover familiar connections by creating visual forms to the process of reconnecting. The project is a response to my upbringing without grandparental relationships, and images fill some of the gaps in my knowledge of them.

Using layering and monotone coloring, a technique borrowed from risograph printing, the images of the past are brought to the present when printed on transparency film. Superimposed images atop one another create more visual complexity, and allude to an ambiguous sense of place and time. A feeling of disconnectedness and interconnectedness, a feeling that may be familiar with many first-generation children around the world that grew up rather differently than their parents and ancestors.