Emily Titman — oliviamridge

Emily Titman, Oregon Homestead, 2019-2024.

This photo book holds images of a trip to my family’s homestead in Brookings, Oregon.

Resembling the innocence of my childhood scrapbooks, I collaged our adventures during this routine summer escape.

What brings depth to the collection is its history, one initially known only to those involved.

This 2019 trip marks the time and place of my aunt’s tragic death, with the images above capturing the moments before the incident.

Through pictures of oblivious joy now pasted alongside its later events, the viewer participates in an active shift of their emotional experience to this archive.

With the audience’s engagement of initial obliviousness and later education, an image’s history becomes the axis of perception. Such a process acts as an effort to understand and confront grief as I relate my family’s new relationship with the land to the eternal altering of an image’s viewing.