Svitlana Ahranovska

This series of works explores the fragility of memory and the vulnerability of personal histories under the relentless pressure of time.

At the center of the project is the process of forgetting and the gradual loss of memory, particularly in the context of family history, which is often transmitted fragmentarily—through fragments of stories and photographs preserved in family albums.

The works are created on paper using tiny punctures. This technique functions both as a method of image-making and as a gesture of destruction: the surface of the paper is wounded in order to reveal the image. This emphasizes the fragility of photography as a carrier of memory.

The absence of color and contrast requires a certain engagement from the viewer: one must come closer, change the angle of view, and make an effort to see the image. This process becomes a metaphor for the transmission of family memory—it requires attention, time, and active participation.

The oral stories of older relatives disappear with them, leaving behind photographs of people who cannot always be recognized, and events whose meaning gradually fades. Forgetting is often perceived as a natural process: the present inevitably replaces the past. Memory becomes reduced to fragments—to images without context.

But what if this is not only the natural course of time?

For me, as for many Ukrainians, the question of preserving family memory has become especially urgent during the full-scale invasion. The loss of hometowns, homes, and personal belongings—among which family photo albums were often kept—has revealed the vulnerability of the material evidence of our past.

Destruction becomes not only physical but also symbolic: along with spaces, the stories they contained disappear.

In this project, I reflect on families whose memories are left with no one to preserve them, and on people whose stories vanished together with them.