b4itends

Every day, I get older. Every day, I distance myself from my adolescence just a little bit more than the last. Every day, I find myself panicking over how fast college has gone by and how little time I have left before I graduate. College is what feels like the last grasp onto my younger self, my last connection to my teenage self, my last connection to the self that I never got to experience. B4itends is a collection of photographs that will serve to immortalize the memories I am now making in college, before it ends. Before I lose sight of the comfort of my youth. Before I have to move on. This will be an ongoing project that I intend to expand greatly on before this period in my life ends. Setting out to create these photographs, I intended to treat my SLR like a disposable camera, documenting nights out with friends and the places around me just as is trendy now among other college students. The film I captured each frame on is nearly as old as I am, having expired in the early 2000s. Such an old medium has memories just like me, and exposing this film embeds even more memories into it. Had I gone a number of years longer, I may never have gotten to capture these moments on this specific film. I intervened before its usability had decayed. Before it ended. I see such a medium as a metaphor for life. You have the potential to create a number of memories before your time is up. After your time has expired, it is only so long until these memories fade with the changing seasons and ongoing years. The imperfections I have found in each image are remnants of this film’s memories, converged with mine. As I continue in my college career, I intend to cherish the moments I see before me and the stupid things I get up to. There is a certain thrill to being young and dumb, and I don’t want to lose sight of that, B4itends.