Kitchen Review - Diane Meyer's Embroidered Photographs

I recently discovered these embroidered photographs by Diane Meyer, a San Diego based artist. She embroiders pixels onto photographs to obscure parts of the image. Her intent is to highlight “the failures of photography in preserving experience and personal history as well as the means by which photographs become nostalgic objects that obscure objective understandings of the past.”

I was instantly attracted to them. I love older photographs and the nostalgia they evoke. There is also a sentimental quality to embroidery, with its association to the past and the home. By bringing together two mediums for nostalgia- one modern, one ancient- she really amplifies the concept of the photograph as a nostalgic object. The technique of embroidering on the photograph also plays with the idea of the pixel, the building block of photography. I like this notion that if we look at anything too closely, it can be obscured.

The relationship between photography and memory also fascinates me. Photography is used as a way to preserve memories, but so often it can alter our perception of the past or become substitutes for our memories. I thought of my college thesis, where I analyzed Kodak advertisements in the post WWII period and how they fostered the creation of a homogeneous, shared American-family memory. Since it was a new household technology, Kodak used advertisements to instruct buyers on what types of photographs to take to “remember all of life’s important moments” and even issued pamphlets on how to stage them. These preserved moments- the birth of a child, a wedding, family trips, birthdays, etc.- are part of most family’s photo albums. Through the insistence of advertisers, documenting our personal history has become normal human experience.

Since I find nostalgia so intriguing, I really enjoy art that brings these questions to light. I look at her works and I relate to them, because I have photographs that look just like them. I can replace the obscured faces from her photographs with my own family’s faces. I feel nostalgic for a time I don’t even remember.