Across the summers of 2018 and 2020, I unknowingly took a series of double-exposed photographs. Each image is imperfect, with the sharp lines of exposures taken years apart interrupting one another mid-moment. Two stories, both about summers spent in precious places, are telling themselves at once, and neither is quite complete. Where do they diverge and intersect? Which part of each image is “real” and which is the ghost? 

I’m interested in the stories we try to tell with photography, and the stories photography tells us about ourselves. These photographs, upon developing, prompted me to consider my relationship to their taking; to the people and places that were not-quite-preserved in doing so; and to the ephemerality of my own memory. The act of taking a photo is entangled with anxiety and urgency, but also with care and nostalgia. Photography—especially personal photography—speaks to our endless need to pinpoint, to remember, to hold on and preserve: “never again” lasting forever. And yet, my attempts to preserve these two summers resulted in a single unreality that I can’t quite recall.