Generational (Un)Forgetting
2024-2025
2024-2025
This project is an exploration of the process of history making, looking at the intersection of personal and collective histories to better contextualize the actions of the individuals who came before me. This interest is then focused through the lens of photography, narrowing down the ways in which we narrativize and cherry pick the past to build our identities. After losing my father and experiencing the complications of grief, I became interested in how we acquire all that we carry with us. I was left with all these inherited traits, some good, some seemingly more bad, and I wasn’t sure how to make sense of them without looking to the past.
I discovered a family photo album of newspaper clippings and press photographs depicting his early life in a newly independent Manila. When compared to accounts of his lived experiences, the publicized contents of the album seemed to create an overly idealized version of his parents' lives as “successful” restaurateurs and socialites. In relying on both private and public institutions and comparing and contrasting my findings with one another, I attempted to find truths in the random fragmented collections of press photographs and family portraits.
This piece consists of original photos and articles from the Manila times, a paper initially started for American soldiers stationed abroad in the philippines during the spanish-american war. Still in print today, it was the first English language paper in the far east and the first daily American newspaper in the Philippines. Since it was written in English the contents of the paper were more exclusionary. Written primarily for the aforementioned Americans and wealthy Filipinos doing business with them, this made the contents of the paper more aspirational for a majority of Filipinos. The publication’s numerous lifestyle and weekend supplementals aided in pushing western ideals and standards onto a susceptible country recovering from some of world war two’s most devastating atrocities while also navigating a newly found “independence” from the US.
I discovered a family photo album of newspaper clippings and press photographs depicting his early life in a newly independent Manila. When compared to accounts of his lived experiences, the publicized contents of the album seemed to create an overly idealized version of his parents' lives as “successful” restaurateurs and socialites. In relying on both private and public institutions and comparing and contrasting my findings with one another, I attempted to find truths in the random fragmented collections of press photographs and family portraits.
This piece consists of original photos and articles from the Manila times, a paper initially started for American soldiers stationed abroad in the philippines during the spanish-american war. Still in print today, it was the first English language paper in the far east and the first daily American newspaper in the Philippines. Since it was written in English the contents of the paper were more exclusionary. Written primarily for the aforementioned Americans and wealthy Filipinos doing business with them, this made the contents of the paper more aspirational for a majority of Filipinos. The publication’s numerous lifestyle and weekend supplementals aided in pushing western ideals and standards onto a susceptible country recovering from some of world war two’s most devastating atrocities while also navigating a newly found “independence” from the US.
