En Tout Cas
A fish never thinks about water until he is out of it.
- Robert Penn Warren
This body of work is a result of a seemingly insignificant moment between myself and grandmother. Years ago I was heading to the store to pick up something that was needed for dinner. On the way out I asked my grandmother if she needed anything and gave her a quick unaffectionate hug. “What you call that, an ‘en tout cas’?” she asked. I inquired “what is an ‘en tout cas’?” A just in case.
En Tout Cas explores the notion that we can subconsciously alter our past through malleable memories. In this body of work I’ve mined my memories to recreate representative imagery of select scenes from my upbringing in the Cajun culture. These images do not try to render an accurate account of the subject or scenes but have emerged from distorted autobiographical memories. The images are titled using common phrases that are unique to the local language which is derived from a french dialect.
En Tout Cas was made using the photogram technique with a cyanotype process. The process is known to many as sun prints and is practiced in elementary schools. I have vague memories of doing this process myself at a young age and can assume that this was my first photographic capture experience.
