RETURN – Annina Mannila

Anyone who has kept a diary has likely been surprised when revisiting old entries. Over time, our mental images of events begin to take on a life of their own and no longer align with what was originally written down.

We tend to perceive our memory and sense of self as relatively stable, yet in reality, memories are built on fragile ground. According to contemporary understanding, memories are reconstructed anew each time we recall them—always slightly different from before. Paradoxically, the more we remember, the further we drift from the original memory.

My exhibition explores the quirks of memory through photographs printed and projected onto various materials, as well as through video and installation. Memory appears in these works as fleeting: memories fade, transform over time, blend with other recollections, and merge with other people’s accounts of what has happened. The materials used in the works include water, glass, and translucent fabric. The exhibition is based on personal, documentary-style photographs taken over more than a decade at my summer retreat. However, the documentary nature of the images does not anchor them to a truthful record of past events.

A single, detached image is like an inkblot test—the meaning we assign to it reveals just as much about the viewer and the context of interpretation as it does about what actually happened in the past. The way we capture and interpret a photograph as a “memory” is also shaped by the conventions of photographic storytelling—how certain situations or subjects are traditionally depicted.

Some memories fade no matter how desperately we try to hold on to them, while others return to haunt us over and over again. Memory does not operate according to our will. As writer John Irving put it: “You think you have a memory, but memory has you.”

Translated with ChatGPT