Larry C. Volk
“Les Souvenirs” Artist Statement
In the past decade, many of the works I have produced have been drawn from a collection of inherited images and materials, and focus on family history, biography, reminiscence, and recall. This approach to making work raises questions regarding the manner in which the past is perceived and memories are informed and constructed through imagery. How is our construction and perception of what we recall anomalous and to what extent are the resulting memories, inherently colored, selective and obscured?
This series of images is a set of considerations regarding what we see, what we represent, and the foibles of memory. In the prints I have employed dots appropriated from Ishihara Pseudoisochromatic plates. Ishihara plates are used to test color perception deficiencies. While the color perception assessments reveal physical perceptual deficits, they shed no light on the biases and idiosyncrasies of individual seeing. These deficiencies and anomalies however, have their parallel in our forms of recall. While we may feel that the images we make and collect may authentically reflect our experience, they can be nonetheless idiosyncratic, inaccurate, and incomplete.