mary lamb

"First Person" is both curation and creation; drawing upon an artificial archive of strangers collected from estate sales, auctions, and second-hand shops, vernacular photographs make up the heart of the work but are informed and complemented by black and white portraits that attempt to reconstruct an unknowable past.

This work is shaped by my training as an archivist and by my own obsessive self-documentation. Ideas of discovery, photographic representation, performance, memory, and manipulation emerge as I explore the ways in which women engage with photography to develop a sense of self, claim space, and perform the story of their lives.