Why do people return to a place? How are both person and place transformed by the act of returning? Two of my long-term ongoing projects, Kinkeeping and Mahnmal explore these questions, in diametrically-opposed contexts.  

Mahnmal is a study of survivors of mass atrocities who choose willingly to return to the place(s) where they experienced immense suffering, despite the circumstances. Based on my experience working in the education department at Gedenkstätte Buchenwald (Buchenwald Memorial) in 2019 and subsequent visits, this project considers the in/flexibilities of the idea of a “mahnmal” —a German term for a “monument of warning.”

Contrastingly, Kinkeeping centers on my family finding sentimental value in a small northern Michigan town that once marked the midpoint of my great-grandfather’s drive between his parents’ house and his college in the 1960s.

Both projects—and increasingly my photographic work in general—see memory as collected rather than collective. James E. Young writes that “individuals cannot share another’s memory any more than they can share another’s cortex.” Instead, we can share the meanings that we assign to memory. I am fascinated by the notion that whatever group we may be a part of, our memories remain ours and ours alone.