ICP Teen Academy
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Karen Berman
My project explores nostalgia and the complicated ways we remember our past. I am fascinated by the way we look back on earlier moments with warmth, even when they were not as simple or perfect as remembered. Rather than depicting nostalgia as an absolute, good or bad, I show the area in between. Nostalgia can be both comforting and distorting, oversimplifying the past in ways we may fail to recognize. It is this endless cycle of longing that shapes the way I think about myself in the present.
I wanted to explore this tension through objects around my house that provoke these feelings of reminiscence. The majority of these items are ordinary household objects such as toys, books, and little trinkets, but the weight they hold resides in the importance of the past. I used various lighting set ups, creating dramatic shadows to change the atmosphere, evoking sentimentality and joy, while also allowing distance and uncertainty. The photographs capture how memories can feel fragmented, fantastical, selective, and sometimes distorted. Ultimately, this project reflects the complicated ways, for better or for worse, in which we reconstruct our own visions of our own past.
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