The Fabric of Memory

October 16, 2024  •  Leave a Comment

 

So many threads go into making a book. The Fabric of Memory started in 2020 during the isolation of lockdown but where exactly? When I found myself dreaming most nights of women who I used to know? When the names Ida and Iris came to me out of the blue and with them the idea of the changing shape of friendships over time? With the keep-myself-busy project of photographing the various textiles around the house?  Or, with the gradual realization that something was wrong with my vision, and I was seeing weird bubble-like distortions in lines that were usually straight.

In retrospect there seems an obvious connection between my sight problems and the circular holes I was putting in the filmy layers I was adding to my pictures. Not to mention the names (eye names?) of my putative characters. But I still cannot remember how Ida and Iris turned their vaguely-imagined selves into trees.

The first edition of the book, Ida and Iris or Friendship Recalled, didn’t turn out as I hoped. Creating a narrative out of images is uncertain work. I sharpened certain details, brightened colors, changed the cover, changed the order, but something was still out of focus. My physical vision problem had resolved though, so I put the book away and went on to other things.

In thinking about a new edition of this book I was drawn back by the dreamy colors and swirling motion in the pictures. Approaching the project with a fresh eye (!) I saw that the real subject was not the characters Ida and Iris, but the nature and process of remembering. The earlier decision to add a strip of photographed fabric to each page had been a sudden design impulse, but now, taken together with the holes digitally torn in the layers, it seemed to be part of the material nature of memory. Precise detail mixed with tattered scraps. Vivid minutiae emerging beside hazy widescreen landscapes.

In this edition, which combines new plates with older ones, Ida and Iris are gone, but trees and the changing aspects of friendship they suggest remain. With the new title, The Fabric of Memory, I think the threads that led to the original have finally been woven together.

 

The Fabric of Memory Or Friendship Recalled is a Last Seacoast Book. See more images and  how to order copies of the book at arielswartley.com/fabricofmemory

 

 


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