Maddie Fox

The Time We Spent

The Time We Spent explores the relationships between photography, grief, and memory. Narrated by my grandma’s own words, I use photographs to construct a trace of my grandparents’ lives from both the past and present. I curate archival photographs, new photographs I’ve captured, handwriting, stories, and physical memorabilia in order to highlight their increased social value and fragility in a time of personal grief. Through multiple interviews with my grandma, I’ve strived to cultivate a culture of listening and storytelling in the wake of my grandpa’s absence. Activating photography as a form of social practice has allowed me to engage with and understand my grandparents’ lives and memories both photographically and orally. My hope for this book is to allow others to re-experience a past that is not their own. I welcome viewers to seek out reflections of themselves, their own families, and stories in my book. The pandemic restrictions called my social habits and sense of familial bonds into question. It stirred in me an urgency to archive the past and document the present. I found both healing in the observation of the past and catharsis in the creation of the new.