Memoire, 2025 is a direct reflection of my personal interpretation of empathy and how the virtue of compassion is integrated into my life. These themes are displayed through a handmade semi-gloss paper and leather album, which contains black and white portraits of myself gradually aging or declining. The cover of the album is hand embossed with a symmetrical design that is directly inspired by the designs observable on small horizontal 1940’s English Art Deco photo albums. One of the purposes of utilizing an intentionally vintage-inspired design language for the elements of this piece is to convey the idea that this album contains the chronological documentation of a bygone person’s life, which is reduced down to snapshots in black and white.
Empathy and compassion play a large part in this piece, which are aspects that connect to my sense of place. Growing up, I never felt as though my parents role modelled the action and mentality of empathizing with the struggles of others, particularly when it came to those who I didn’t know. I feel as though my emotional response to the struggles of strangers is often more apathetic than with solicitude and understanding, which is a poor quality of mine I’ve sought to change for a while now. I cannot state with certainty that my sense of place is purely geographical, but is more concerned with particular values and a type of person I’m growing to become. By placing myself, aged, in consecutive snapshots, I’m forcing myself into the position of a stranger whose life has been reduced to seven images. I’m allowing myself to recognize that I’m no different than every other person I dont know, who is living a life just as intricate and important as mine. Who is living a life as worthy of empathy as mine. Additionally, I feel as though my sense of self also revolves around a specific era in time. For a large portion of my life, I have found myself feeling disconnected to the era I live in and have always admired specific perspectives and values adopted by past generations, particularly around the creative industries and buying and consuming habits. For the actual appearance of this piece, I drew inspiration from many vintage sources and examined 1940’s albums and English and Chinese Art Deco styles with the goal of making my project as vintage feeling as possible.
