For her debut monograph, A Poor Sort of Memory, Tracy L. Chandler returned to her hometown in the California desert, bringing with her a sense of ambivalence. “As I revisited old secret spots in concrete channels and secluded nooks in rock formations, I was reminded of a past filled with trauma and my struggle to find both a sense of belonging and my own identity,” she reflects. Her youthful explorations had been a way to escape the dark chaos of her family home and seek solace on the outskirts.
In her photographs, there’s a striking contrast between the calm, minimalist landscape and the artist’s enduring feelings of claustrophobia and alienation. As Chandler retraced her steps, she faced the challenge of aligning the physical reality she encountered with the emotional truths of her memories: “I found myself chasing shadows and dodging monsters,” she explains, “and it became difficult to separate memory from imagination, reflection from projection.”
Rather than avoid this uncertainty, Chandler leaned into her role as an unreliable narrator, using fragments of her past to weave a new photographic narrative. “Do I think taking these pictures will recover some kind of truth?” she asks. “My experience suggests the opposite.” Instead, her work seemed to pull her deeper into uncertainty, recalling the White Queen’s words to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”