17 second film

4 pages bound with pillar binding.

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If a photograph could speak what would it say?

 

'You Have Been Here and These Things Remember You' - Dawn Parsonage (2020). This phrase is a recurring theme of Dawn Parsonages work. Originally found in a 1930s snapshot album it has come to encompass her relationship to found photography.

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Notably this project is a homage to Étienne-Jules Marey with Georges Demeny and their piece JE VOUS AIME - Chronophotography (1891). Originally created as an experimental technique to teach people lip-reading via photographs, when translated to the moving image the result is a surreal and direct film.

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This piece replaces the original phrase with a new one, one which speaks directly to us. In 2019 Dawn was traveling through Colorado and found an old album in a junk shop. Inside were around a hundred snapshots, each with their own typed caption underneath. But these captions were not the usual dates and events, they were phrases.  Under one was a quote which has stuck with Dawn ever since "YOU HAVE BEEN HERE AND THESE THINGS REMEMBER YOU".

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