HOUSE RIDDLED is a 32-photograph series created to bridge the gap between my family’s memory and my own lived experience.
Collective memory has long been a point of tension in my family. I tend to be the one who misremembers the facts of our shared life, which feels isolating in a family of three. My rightful claim to my childhood feels dubious because I remember, but in a very different way.
My dad died two weeks before Christmas in 1987. It was tragic, and unfortunately, a very public spectacle. I was five years old.
My mom, sister, and I moved five times in the five years surrounding his death. I went to five elementary schools, three of which I attended during kindergarten and first grade. We went into hiding following my dad’s funeral.
These are the facts my family agrees on—documented, corroborated, relevant—but for me, deficient. Perhaps because facts do not accurately reflect the feral experience of trauma. Facts cannot offer comfort to a grieving child. Hence, they serve little purpose in matters I consider worth remembering.
Using photography, I am able to show what exists between the facts—namely, the emotions that fill every corner of home after a traumatic event. After all, it’s these emotions, not facts, that remain more vividly, impacting how we live and relate decades later. HOUSE RIDDLED has given me a more holistic understanding of my family’s communal grief than any newspaper article from that night has ever offered.
