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For this body of work, I took the prompt “Seeing Others, Seeing Ourselves” quite literally. The main goal behind this series was to evoke a sense of family and to show the connections through time in the still images you see before you. In this case, I am using my own family to help communicate the notions and nuances of family and collective memory. This is a feeling that everyone has felt and reflected on at some point. With these ideas in mind, I delved into the family archive. After going through hundreds of slides I finally landed on the few that spoke to me most, images that did not just represent my family but the entire family life in general. Alongside these images, I captured images containing the same subjects, objects, and settings to create links that can help connect and express the time and growth that can be seen between the juxtaposition of family slide film prints and medium format film prints. Everyone at one point in time has experienced that feeling of family, whether it be by blood or by choice. This body of work is made to look at these relationships and how they change and react with time. Family is a feeling, a memory held in time.

Bio

Samuel Toward is a photographer from St. Catharines, Ontario, currently working out of Toronto while he attends Ryerson University for the Image Arts: Photography Studies program. Sam’s work is based in documentary practices which he uses to understand and expand his knowledge for conditions of existence and the urban environment. The main goal of his work is to help himself and others understand how we operate, why we do it and what it looks like through still images.