The series ‘This Is You Here’ began with the artists' personal reflections on memory, triggered by childhood memories of their grandfather, who would photograph them with a wooden view camera and point to the developing image, saying, ‘This is you!’ What sounds banal established an early connection between image and identity. When we look at a photograph related to our own experiences, though, our intangible and unreliable memories surrender to the printed image. The concrete photographs replace our abstract memories and our identity is reaffirmed by that set of photographs.
Years later, the chance discovery of discarded, underexposed family negatives prompted the merging of these anonymous portraits with their own, forming a constructed lineage that reflects on how photographs can generate—or replace—personal memory. The project’s evolution into This Is You Here extends this exploration to the role of place, examining how environments, like images, participate in shaping and sustaining identity.