Egg Hunt With My Grandma Toshi (2023)

Clementine Keenan

Egg Hunt With My Grandma Toshi (2023)
Ghost print on cotton paper.
20"x19"

Inspired by: 

Glenn Harris (Father)

Keenan Toshi Harris Easter Basket Backyard Lillies (1998)
Chromogenic print.
4"x5"

Drawing from a selection of family photos, my current series, Retakes, retraces the story of my boyhood as told by my father’s camera. As someone who has since come out as transgender, I am interested in (1) what these images reveal about my familial and cultural value systems and (2) how my familial photographic record effects and interacts with my sense of self. By layering contact prints of acrylic, oil, and oil pastel, each “retake” renders a unique sequence of five “ghost” prints, which waver in the space between “original” and reproduction. Rather than brushstrokes, my process reveals its pigment in forks and fractal whorls — much like the ridges that form when an unborn hand detaches from the inside of its mother’s womb. Just as fingerprints serve as evidence for the body through the unique record of this separation, my work reveals itself (myself) through moments of letting go, of letting past be past in order to embrace the varied distortions whereby my mind makes a memory of time.