Artist's Statement

Teri Fullerton

various sizes: small format originals to large format archival digital prints The snapshot is identified as photography at its most innocent, yet the photographic trace of a friend or loved one carries a significant existential weight. What then is the currency of a stranger? I collect other people’s vintage snapshots, the ones left behind and have become a commodity. There is a search for what Roland Barthes refers to as “that has been”. They are embedded with issues of mortality, memory, and nostalgia. Among the most interesting of insights provided by the snapshot is the universal nature of our history; you did yesterday what I do today. We find patterns and insights- or at least look for them. It is the search for meaning, from self-definition to the human condition that draws us in. Along with the collected photographs, objects, words, geometrical drawings and present day digital images are combined to consider photography’s relationship to itself. The end result is also a nod to a line from a Walt Whitman poem: “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”