Lost Memories

Lost Memories by Levon ParianAn art book by Levon Parian. Illustrated with vibrant and color-infused photographs from his family’s travels around the world. The original slides for these iconic images were damaged by mold and mildew from a flood. The textures and interlacing colors have created a cacophony of abstraction and have emerged as an exploration of collective memory as well as the author’s rediscovery of moments in his own forgotten childhood.

The Parian family moved almost a dozen times—from Beirut, to Chicago, to Pakistan, and to Iran. The slides cover the whole sweep of his childhood.

Recognizing the beauty of the “lost” photographs, Parian rescued them and made them into vibrant and color-infused individual images and photographic prints. Coupling the images with texts from with his own childhood memories, Parian highlights the way in which time and events effect our individual, familial and collective memory.

In Lost Memories Parian investigates classic questions inherent in the photographic medium, such as transitory existence, preservation and loss, as well the relationship of the past to the present and future.

Parian writes in his book:

A memory is like a fine thread,
Pull on it gently and you may unravel
the link to a moment
in your mind.

A photograph expands that link.
Like a form of time travel
to those moments only we remember.

Or at least think we remember.