Do I really remember my childhood?  What I mean is do I remember the actual event that I lived, or did I construct the memories.

It is my belief that in fact that most of my memories of my early childhood are a collection of post-memories reconstructed from stories my parents told me or photos in photo albums.  These early memories have a sense of intangibility or plasticity to them.  They are modifiable depending on which relative of mine tells me the story.  Since I am dealing with narratives rather then documented history, both the images and the stories are subjective and open to interpretation.  As a result, I can modify the experience by modifying the image upon which the stories are based.

In this project, entitled Memories of childhood, I imagine what it would be like to engage my son, as contemporaries rather then as father and son.  The setting for this imaginary friendship is the imagination itself.  The esthetic that I strive for to evoke this setting in the realm of imagination, is in part inspired from Clark and Pougnaud[1], where the photographic images of the characters is set on a painting or “painterly” background.  This obviously constructed image echoes the construct of the memory that is formed by the image.

Each painting that serves as a background was specifically painted by my mother for each image.  As I was growing up, my dad was usually the one who used to take the photos.  Among her many talents, my mom is also a painter.   This project is not an individual work, it is a family project.

After finishing this project I am convinced that I have no true memories of my childhood, only post-memories.  The most vivid memories that I thought I had all have corresponding photos in photo-albums that my parents have assembled over the years.  I do not have any clear memories of childhood events that are not photographed.  All I have of that period of my life are post-memories. Are these actual events or implanted memories from contrived images?