The eyes are from photos of me through the years - they are the young-me's that are part of memory and are kept alive (or are they) via these photos. I look into "her" eyes and wonder, Who was I then? What was she thinking? Why did she spend so much time worrying? I prefer the photos where the eyes don't look into the camera - it seems "she" was about to go and do something more interesting - or the sideways look could indicate she was thinking about something entirely removed from the current situation; don't we often do that to keep from meeting other people's eyes, to indicate we are "elsewhere" for the moment? If children hide their eyes to become invisible, adults slide their eyes to do the same thing...
The title leapt out of the quote from Penelope Lively I noted in an earlier post about the "three generations" project - the relevant words are "you are not the seeing eye". Having the title, I immediately knew which photos to select, and putting them onto my template and printing took all of 10 minutes. All the binding materials were to hand, and for the big decision of which fabric to use for the spine, I simply followed the precept of "take the nearest". The binding (drum leaf binding) took two and a half hours.
This project has made me curious about how other artists use autobiographical photos in their work.
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