Memory is an interesting topic, and it reminds me of a task we did in ARS281 last semester: Unphotographable. I want to connect Unphotographable with Unmemorable. Unphotographable events exist in memory, and we can recall these memories. However,  back to that time, we may have no chance to take or forget to take the photos. On the contrary, the Unmemorable event was captured on camera, but we can’t recall the event. Maybe it because the photos were taken by accident, or it may have been spent so many years for people to remember. I took 7 old pictures that we can’t remember from me and my family. Then, I took photos of these pictures and used Photoshop to create a sense of forgetting.

This is a picture of me in kindergarten when I was 5 years old. That day is Christmas Day. I am the figure in the middle looking at the camera. The kids around the table with me were probably my best friends at the time. Unfortunately, when I looked up the picture again, except for the little girl on the right, I could not remember the rest of the children. It was a coincidence that the girl on the right, after graduating from kindergarten, was in the same primary school and high school as me. Although we didn’t have much contact afterward. But that’s probably why I remember her.

This is also a picture of me in kindergarten when I was 4 years old. This is a group photo after the performance show on Children’s Day. In the picture are my classmates. I am in the first row on the left. The girl next to me is the one from the previous picture. The rest of the children are in the same primary school as me. Three of them are in the same class as me.

This picture was taken when I was 3 years old. My grandparents and I went to the city next to my city by taking the train. My grandfather said the boy in this photo was a strange little boy from Xinjiang province. Grandpa told me that the little boy and I played on the train until we took off. But Unfortunately, I have no memory of it. However, I think I must have been very happy back then.

This is a family photo related to my dad. The baby in the middle of the picture is him. This is the family photo from my grandma’s side. My dad was held by his grandmother and grandpa, but my father didn’t remember his grandfather at all. Sitting next to his grandmother’s left is his mother, also known as my grandmother. The rest of the people in the picture are my grandmother’s three sisters, my grandfather, and one of my grandmother’s brother-in-law. For the man in the far left corner, my grandparents couldn’t remember who he was, and why he was in the family photo.

This is also a picture of my father as a child. According to his description, the woman might be his neighbor and the two little girls might be the woman’s children. It is also possible that the woman could also be his primary school teacher, and the other two girls could be his classmates. He could recall where they took this picture. The only thing he remembers is he was using to close to these people.

This is a picture of my grandma. The picture was taken in 1980. At that time, grandma was the principal of a primary school, and this is the graduation photo of a class she taught. Grandmother said because she taught many classes, and it was been 40 years, she can’t remember anyone in the picture.

This photo is the most interesting one in this project. Observing the way the figures are dressed, they look like people from the Qing Dynasty that was hundreds of years ago. These two people are my grandfather’s grandparents. If so, they would have been born around 1830. None of my family had any impression of the people in the picture, including grandpa. According to my grandpa’s recall, my family started the small business hundreds of years ago. Back in ancient China at that time, the status of merchants was relatively low. It is not easy to feed a family by owning a small business. The photos were taken around 1900, and I’m glad my ancestors left their portrait back to that poor era.