In A Past Passed Down, I consider what it means to hold onto the past – my own as well as my family’s – both literally and figuratively. Through colored pencil drawings, I convey the whimsy of a youth I personally experienced, recounting colorful memories of Grandma’s house, summers at the lake, and childhood bedrooms. I compare and intertwine these narratives with those of my parents, whose pasts are preserved in photographs from my family’s archive. I collage these mediums and pasts together so that one fills in the gaps of the other, collapsing time and stretching space. We have shared the same places, histories, and genetics, though we inhabit separate generations. In reconstructing our early experiences (which occurred decades apart), I marvel at how some things remain the same and, simultaneously, reflect on the bittersweet and inevitable changes of life, family, and identity.

Through this work I explore my own interest in photography, alongside my family’s, and the histories that have survived and can survive because of it. Perhaps most of all, I contemplate how we – in an era of growing immediacy and accessibility – choose to visually preserve the past and present for the sake of the future.