And then you were gone

Working with my personal archive of film negatives, I create a juxtaposition between the concept of photographic memory and my experience of prosopagnosia and neurodivergence. I photographed old negatives held in my hand against various light-filled backgrounds. The majority of images are minimally processed. Others are layered images with colour input to give an insight into my experience of the world through a neurodivergent lens. It is messy, beautiful, confusing, and honest...just like my mind. _________________________________________________________ I have never been able to remember faces. I get people mixed up all the time and often walk right past people I know. When I encounter someone that obviously knows me, I switch into panic mode and stall for time as I desperately try to pick up clues from conversations, visual cues, and vocal mannerisms. The more I see a face the greater the chance it has of imprinting onto my mind, but only when I see you in front of me and in the right context. I also forget people exist if I can’t see them, even people that I am close to and love dearly. I upset people when I don’t call or see them for long stretches of time but how do I remember you if you have literally ceased to exist in my mind? I didn’t know it had a name. I didn’t know that it was a genuine neurological condition, likely related to my neurodivergence and not, as I always imagined, some personal defect that I could overcome (if only I would apply myself more). A life spent with so much shame and embarrassment for something that was beyond my control. Prosopagnosia; face blindness or facial agnosia Object impermanence; an inability to understand that objects (and people) exist when they are out of sight.