that affect them, is a nod to documentary photographers Lewis Hine and Gordon Parks.
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She
documented her family, herself, and their everyday life, for The Notions of Family, with the aim
to understand and “unabashedly confront” the socio-economic-environmental violences of living
in Braddock, Pennsylvania and the lasting effects on her family. Frazier’s stylistic decision is a
call-back to the history of documentary photography. Therefore, her postmodern approach to
documentary photography is in inextricable dialogue with Kline and Parks and defines a visual
lineage of political activism and change. In a similar way to Frazier, I am thinking of the
point-and-shoot camera as a call-back to the visual culture of the early 2000’s in order to be in
dialogue with my memories. The visuality at the sites of Girl, Departed’s past suicides are
deeply embedded in her psyche. Memories of the surrounding visual and popular culture at the
time of her departure are subconsciously accessed and expressed through the aesthetics of her
photographs. I am specifically interested in the presence of the point-and-shoot camera and
visual language of the early 2000’s due to the fact it was my surrounding visual environment at
the time of my departures. With a point-and-shoot, I can only make poor images. I can only
make 300dpi JPGS; this does not meet the institutional standard for archival printing or
collections. Like Goldin’s slideshows, this pixel limitation disrupts the value of an image, thus is
a further departure of the institutional standard. The quality of my images do not qualify a
position in high-culture because of this limitation. Girl, Departed and her images are left in the
realm of the unrecognized as “real” by the institution, which in turn, means that her reality is
unrecognizable as “real” in the context of the institution. My reality is reflected in the pixel
confusion that occurs when I take a picture of something too bright for the auto settings to catch
up with. My reality is abject to viewers who only want to see something good. My hope is found
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