MARK ESHBAUGH

Recollections

Dracut, Massachusetts • markeshbaugh.com

  • Everyone views the world from their personal perspective, seeing their environment in a unique way. Any two people will recall different images of the same scene or event. My images serve as a metaphor to those landscapes seen by many eyes and varying recollections. The fragmented pieces of our communal memory of an event are presented as they are truly experienced by the population in multiple frames, viewpoints, and perspectives.

    The process of perception is something like that of a movie. Your eyes dart about to focus on different people and various objects. Your eyes function like film cameras combining dozens of still pictures to register motion and depth in a sequence. As we move through space and time, we predict what will happen next based on the previous “frames” we have encountered.

    Cognitive science calls this filmic sequence of events optic flow. No single point of focus is ever divorced from what comes immediately before or after.

    The fractured imagery reminds us of the limitations of film-based capture and the limitations of our memories. According to philosopher Alva Noe, “perception is not something that happens to us, or in us. It is something we do.” We cannot perceive or absorb every detail at once, but instead intuitively map experiences in our mind. We cannot capture a complete moment of time with a photograph, just as we can never remember a complete moment of time accurately.

    Photographs have a natural role in the way memory can and cannot be captured and constructed. The mind can create worlds and events within our “memory” that may not have been the reality. My photographs only provide pieces of the whole that the viewer must reconstruct, or reconcile, further confusing the affect of memory and recall, while keeping the impact of a completed thought. I remove extraneous detail and invite imagination to fill the gaps. The pieces of film and strands of memory become one-inthe-same.

  • C-prints, 20 x 30 inches