Aline Smithson: The Ephemeral Archive

© Installation view of Aline Smithson’s The Ephemeral Archive at the Brand Library & Art Center, Photo by Adam Kolkman

Lenscratch

By Tracy L. Chandler

“The neuroscientist and author David Eagleman has written that we all die three deaths: “The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.” I would say there’s a fourth: the moment the last remaining picture of you is seen for the final time. These found photographs not only remind me of this delicate thing we run both toward and away from — time — but they also hold something else. The humbling, steadying truth that, one day, that’s all we’ll be: a photo.”.

– Bill Shapiro, from The Strange Lure of Other People’s Photos, New York Times Magazine

Aline Smithson has long been considering how photographs move through time—as conveyors of memory, history, and being. The Ephemeral Archive, her new exhibition with Los Angeles Center of Photography at the Brand Library & Art Center, is an expansive and conceptual exploration of the power that family photographs hold and the alarming potential of losing our visual legacies to platforms that corrupt, potentially losing whole histories of being in the process.

Visiting this show was an absolute thrill, not only to support my long time friend and mentor, but to relish in the breadth of her deeply engaging work. From large scale photograph installations, to interactive performance pieces, and an experimental film; each piece is a profound comment on impermanence and approaches this grave topic with style and wit. Smithson has a knack for visually representing conceptual themes with deft skill. She distracts us with beauty and humor while delivering a bitter underhand of truth. The show is running through February 24th 2024 and I look forward to revisiting the work again before it too slips through time.

See complete transcript of a conversation between Tracy L Chandler and Aline Smithson…