Chasing Memory As a kid, my brother loved strawberry milk. I couldn’t stand it. Why does the image stay with me after all these years? To evoke the feeling of chasing childhood memories during adulthood, I took photographs where I grew up on the East Coast and where I live now on the West Coast. When I reflect on the past, I do not hold onto specific facts or conversations. What I recall are the images, the way an object looked, its color, shape, and texture. Tangible objects trigger my memory; I can be standing in a corner store in California in the springtime and immediately be transported to my grandparents’ home on North Charles Street, white with black shutters. As I move into a new phase of my life, I recognize a strong need to remember the past and record it, to somehow revisit and recreate my own reality. By doing this body of work, I am overcoming the fear that I will lose the pieces to an important time of my life. These photographs are a collage of moments that allow me the opportunity to re-enter my past, to follow and claim my own memory, to hold onto and shape it as I Iand more firmly in the present.