Connor Archambault: I love the way you love

Connor Archambault: I love the way you love by Vicente CayuelaSeptember 17, 2025

This week we are looking at projects exploring issues of family, archives and community. Today the focus is on Connor Archambault‘s project, I love the way you love. Placing photos from his family archive on domestic spaces where they were originally taken four decades before, Archambault makes memory a physical totem. The artist states: “I created this body of work to show a life before me, in a house I thought I knew well. These photographs are part of an ongoing project and mean even more to me with the recent passing of my great grandfather.”

An interview with the artist follows.

Portrait of Connor Archambault. Courtesy the artist.

Connor Archambault is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores personal narratives through intimate documentary practices. Approaching photography as a form of dialogue, he uses portraiture and fabrication as investigative tools in understanding identity, memory, and family dynamics. Connor is an undergraduate student at Massachusetts College of Art & Design and holds an Associate of Science in Media Production from New England Institute of Technology. His work has been exhibited in various institutions and he is a recipient of the Gertrude Kasebier Grant and the Eddie Adams 2025 Workshop. He currently resides in Boston, MA.

Follow Connor on Instagram: @con_tact.sheets

I love the way you love

My great grandfather gave me his collection of Kodachrome slides a few years ago when I first told him about my interest in photography. I never knew he had such a vast record of our family. Fumbling through the hundreds of slides contained in an old recycling bin, I found memories of everyday life: his 50th birthday, my grandmother’s prom, and so on. I rephotographed the slides in the exact location they were taken more than 45 years ago, projecting the image and aligning the photograph to its original backdrop, virtually extending the borders of the image. Using a medium format camera, I opted to use black and white film to further blend the scene together. I created this body of work to show a life before me, in a house I thought I knew well. These photographs are part of an ongoing project and mean even more to me with the recent passing of my great grandfather.

Tell us more about the project.

CA: I’ve always found family history to be important, to know where you come from. I have the privilege of being able to trace my heritage and see all this evidence of a life before me. There were plenty of vacations, weddings, and holidays, but my absolute favorite images were the mundane at-home snaps I discovered. Most of the slides were taken in the same house my great grandparents still live in, in Rhode Island, so I still had access to the space and not much had changed in terms of décor. It was amazing to look back and see a different version of the people and places I grew up with. My great grandparents had been in their 80s and 90s all my life; I couldn’t imagine them any other way. I’m the great grandson of the 21st century, so being able to live vicariously through these images was magical. I felt like a time traveler, creating portals from the past all over the house. This project certainly changed the way I view the subjects depicted in the photographs. I can now relate to them as everyday people rather than just their role within the family.

How did the idea to bring back these images into a domestic space originate?

CA: I had been digitizing my great grandfather’s slides whenever I could find the time, but it wasn’t until my sophomore year of college that I had the idea to bring the images back into the space. I would take the train from Boston and spend weekend afternoons reconstructing these scenes using the same projector and screen my great grandfather had used. It was a great way to experiment and also spend time with my grandparents. I think they liked having some hustle and bustle around the house for a change.

Working with these photographs, what has been the biggest challenge or realization?

CA: Aligning the photo to its original background could be tedious. I definitely built up a sweat carrying the projector around the house trying to get the perfect angle, and some images simply would not work. Because the process was so laborious, the images I took didn’t initially resonate with me. But over time, and with the recent passing of my great grandfather, the work has evolved and taken on much deeper meaning for me and my family. I’d like to continue the project soon, so my great grandmother can have him present in the house again.