Most recently, I have been working on an ongoing series of hand-embroidered photographs based on found elementary school class pictures from the 1970s. This project continues my interest in the relationship between photography and memory and grew out of an earlier project, Time Spent That Might Otherwise Be Forgotten, an archive of embroidered personal and family photographs.
In the class photographs, the faces of the students, or what would normally be the main focal points of the image, are obscured with cross-stitch embroidery made to resemble the digital pixel structure of the image. By obscuring what would typically be the most important parts of the image, otherwise overlooked details are brought into focus such as body language and other embodiments of social convention. I am interested exploring these details to reveal not only the relationships between the various figures, but also how, even at a very young age, children were taught and instructed to pose in particular ways, often based on gender.
I am interested in this time period not only because it is my own generation, but because it is the last generation to have a childhood unclouded by digital technology. These class pictures were taken before camera phones and digital cameras and at a time when having one’s class picture taken was a more formal occasion—something that has been lost due to the ubiquitous nature of digital photography—making participants more conscious of the photograph as an aspirational vehicle.
— Diane Meyer
Editor’s note: This work was a top winner of the LensCulture Critics’ Choice Awards 2023. Discover all of the remarkable new work that won photography awards this year on the winner’s page.
