I received a camera for Chanukkah in, I think, 1975. I remember it took my folks a while to get me film and flashes, so I didn’t start using it for a while. I have photos that were developed in early 1976. So, I was 6 or 7 years old when I started shooting. I also possess many of my family’s photos from before I was born. DATUM is about the concepts and actions of archiving, displaying and distributing. It allows the viewer to see into the personal photos, as well as photographic art, of a living artist. It allows the viewer to decide what is “art” and what they want to take home. It’s also a project about memory: how the camera captured the images of the memory, the memory of those photos themselves. It’s about how do you figure out where to start? Where do things start? Who gets to decide this. And, what do you leave out? How do you edit? The concepts in the show grow as I do this preparation. As I sift through images, new issues come up. These are different than what I’d originally proposed for the show, but also, all part and parcel of the whole. Parcel is a good word. DATUM is an artist pop-up store. We’ll be selling parcels of history.
MEME Gallery
55 Norfolk St. Cambridge, MA US
2010.05.25-27
In 2014 Alana Kumbier wrote a book and included me about DATUM and my constant archiving. “Ephemeral Material: Queering the Archive” The Collaborative Archive DATUM
