William Josephs Radford
TRANSPARENT
Transparent explores the unstable relationship between memory, absence, and family narrative through a series of lenticular photographs drawn from my childhood family album. By removing my father from the original images, his presence becomes something that can simultaneously appear and disappear, shifting between what is remembered and what remains visually documented.
William Josephs Radford "Transparent"
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Transparent
The process of reconstructing these photographs became an investigation into reconstructive memory: the way we rebuild the past from fragments, photographs, stories, and assumptions. The images containing personal belongings were particularly revealing, as I found myself reconstructing the spaces around him according to how I remembered them rather than simply reproducing what was there.
The process of reconstructing these photographs became an investigation into reconstructive memory: the way we rebuild the past from fragments, photographs, stories, and assumptions. The images containing personal belongings were particularly revealing, as I found myself reconstructing the spaces around him according to how I remembered them rather than simply reproducing what was there.
"The process of reconstructing these photographs became an investigation into reconstructive memory".
Family narratives further complicate this process. Some memories are not experienced directly but inherited through repeated stories and photographs, becoming vicarious memories that can feel as authentic as lived experience. Removing him from these images made me question how much of my own childhood memory is anchored in reality, and how much has been shaped by the stories told about it.
The lenticular process makes this uncertainty physical. As the image shifts between presence and absence, the photograph becomes a space where memory is continually reconstructed—never entirely fixed, and never entirely lost.