(ABOVE) "Penis Envy", photo emulsion on paper, Scotch print, aluminum grommets, nails. © Elizabeth Bristow, 1997

(RIGHT) "Second Sight", photo emulsion on paper. © Elizabeth Bristow, 1997

MFA Thesis Show, May 1997

Photographs, like distant memory, float in and out of focus. They rebuild a past based on remembrance, a thin gauze veiling truths. It is in our nature to have "selective" memory, and similarly I have selected photographs from my family album. Using these images as a point of departure, my work involkes the melancholia of the past superimposed with objects, such as a mask or a veil, that lends the work new meaning. Completely divorced of its' origins, this work attempts to add associations previously absent as I recycle familiar pictures with loaded psychological meaning.

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