{"id":957748,"date":"2026-11-09T03:22:17","date_gmt":"2026-11-09T03:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/957748\/"},"modified":"2026-11-09T03:22:17","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T03:22:17","slug":"after-her-mothers-stroke-lara-porzak-taped-photos-around-her-hospital-bed-this-book-reveals-what-this-taught-her-about-memory-and-the-power-of-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/957748\/","title":{"rendered":"After her mother\u2019s stroke, Lara Porzak taped photos around her hospital bed. This book reveals what this taught her about memory and the power of photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

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As she recounts in her new book, The Chemistry of Memory<\/a>: \u201cI taped pictures of our loved ones to the walls surrounding her bed to reintroduce her to their faces, so she could remember her own identity.”<\/p>\n

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She also included pictures of places they’d visited together, \u201cso she could remember her footprint in the surrounding world\u201d.<\/p>\n

The good news is that things improved from there. In the decade since, her mother has re-learned how to hold a pen and a fork, and how to walk again. She now needs round-the-clock care, and lives with Porzak.<\/p>\n

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And this experience runs through the book, which brings together Porzak\u2019s photographs from 1993 to 2025: horses, owls, butterflies, flowers and wide American landscapes, many of them made as one-of-a-kind tintypes.<\/p>\n

Old-school techniques<\/p>\n

Porzak is known for using labour-intensive, non-digital photographic methods, often utilizing vintage cameras and lenses from the late 1800s to create her photographs. While most photographers keep their darkroom chemicals well away from everyday life, she very much doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

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Bottles of silver nitrate, ferrous sulfate and ethyl ether stand around the sink where she brushes her teeth. Rolls of black and white film sit in the fridge next to the cheese and vegetables. And her mother\u2019s hospital bed is in the corner of her photography studio.<\/p>\n

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Carrara, 2013 (Image credit: Lara Porzak)<\/p>\n

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The Butterfly Effect, 2015 (Image credit: Lara Porzak)<\/p>\n

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Drooping Tulip, 2020 (Image credit: Lara Porzak)<\/p>\n

But that’s not a failure of organisation, but a lifestyle choice. \u201cI don\u2019t separate my life of making photographs from my quotidian existence, they are one and the same,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

And that brings us to the all-important link between photography and memory. \u201cThe present will become the past at the exact moment light strikes my film,” she reflects.<\/p>\n

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“I suppose you can say all photographers are time travellers. I think of my photographs as monuments to moments that were: the capturing of light, time and feeling. That\u2019s the chemistry of memory.”<\/p>\n

An unpredictable process<\/p>\n

Porzak is known for using labour-intensive, non-digital photographic methods, often utilizing vintage cameras and lenses from the late 1800s to create her photographs. While most photographers keep their darkroom chemicals well away from everyday life, she very much doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Many of the images in the book are tintypes, made with the 19th-century wet plate collodion process. The process is unpredictable, and she welcomes that. Swirls, drips and stains creep in around the edges of her plates, giving each image the feel of an old, half-remembered scene.<\/p>\n

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REMington, 2004 (Image credit: Lara Porzak)<\/p>\n

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The front cover of The Chemistry of Memory (Image credit: Lara Porzak)<\/p>\n

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The back cover of The Chemistry of Memory (Image credit: Lara Porzak)<\/p>\n

You can see it in an owl that stares out of a mottled green and amber plate; in a butterfly that seems to flutter in a double exposure. In another image, a single tulip has drooped out of its bottle and lies on the table, leaves arching overhead.<\/p>\n

Other pictures were shot on film and printed in warm sepia tones: dramatic dunes at sunrise, a portrait of a horse called REMington.<\/p>\n

Porzak writes in the introduction: \u201cI want to remember what it feels like to fall into a piece of time when chance and circumstance create a new vision for me to preserve.\u201d She calls the book \u201ca remembrance of a life\u201d and hopes readers will connect with it. \u201cPerhaps they will become your memory, too,\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

The Chemistry of Memory<\/a> by Lara Porzak is published by Damiani and costs \u00a365 \/ $85 \/ \u20ac75.<\/p>\n

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