Liz Steketee: Reconstructed Memories

A unique print series that uses the artist’s personal family photographs to rewrite history from her vantage point.

By altering old family snapshots with digital tools, Liz Steketee has re-written her family history to suit her own point of view. Reconstructed Memories takes the form of a series of family photo albums with altered photos that adhere to the artist’s revisionist history. Presented in a mismatched 1970’s living room, all are welcome to take a seat and peruse her reconstructed artifacts. Steketee selects unrelated images and digitally manipulates them into unlikely combinations to create new memories. She forges new relationships, addresses old confrontations, imagines different experiences, and faces old demons. “I disrupt linear narratives and recompose events, establishing my family history as a construct,” explains Steketee. “Once these new snapshots have been finalized digitally, they are printed, aged and weathered according to their appropriate time period. This rebuilding of memory has allowed me to establish my own version of reality, as I prefer it.”

Based in the Bay Area, Liz Steketee received her MFA in photography from San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited at SF Camerawork, Rayko Photo Center in San Francisco as well as the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins.