Catherine Panebianco: No Memory Is Ever Alone

Catherine Panebianco: No Memory Is Ever Alone by Aline SmithsonNovember 25, 2019

©Catherine Panebianco, Captain

This week we celebrate the genre of Family in preparation for the 2019 Lenscratch Family Exhibition that runs on Thanksgiving. We start with a wonderful series about family legacy and memory by Catherine Panebianco. Catherine’s series, No Memory Is Ever Alone, recently garnered Critical Mass’ Top 50, plus a boatload of other awards. For her project, she considers the two worlds of the past and present, creatively merging them into one. The journal Psychological Science suggests that taking a photograph of something may help us to remember the visual aspects of the moment better, even if we never even look at the image ever again, but the good news is that Catherine is looking at images again with a particular appreciation of worlds and people she knows well…and she brings us along for the ride.

Catherine Panebianco was born in British Columbia, Canada and currently lives in Jamestown, NY. Her photography has been exhibited both in the U.S. and internationally. Her series, No Memory is Ever Alone, was named a Top 50 Finalist in Photolucida’s Critical Mass, won 1st place in the International Photography Awards for fine art, was a finalist for the National Photography Awards for the Texas Photographic Society and a San Francisco Bay International Photography Competition Portfolio Award. Her photography has been shown at the Griffin Museum of Photography, Soho Photo Gallery, the Center for Fine Art Photography and the Erie Art Museum in addition to many other venues. Catherine’s work has also been in numerous publications and she teaches fine art photography workshops to adults and children in local schools.

Catherine will show her work as part of the 2019 Critical Mass Top 50 at the Center for Photographic Arts in Carmel, CA from June 27-August 2. Her series, Benny Was A Good Boy, will be featured in Black & White Magazine’s April 2020 issue.

©Catherine Panebianco, Prom Night

No Memory is Ever Alone

No Memory is Ever Alone is a visual conversation between my dad and I. He used to bring out a box of slides that he photographed in his late teens and early 20s every Christmas and made us view them on an old projector on our living room wall telling the same stories every year. It was a consistent memory from a childhood where we moved a lot and I never felt like I had a steady “place” to live and create memories.

I realized that by placing the slides in my current landscape, I created not only a connection between his life and mine, but a trail of memories, each that had its own association for both of us. A lot of these slides are of my mom, they were together almost 60 years. She passed away recently and I feel like her spirit, and all the spirits of the past, are around us. These little vignettes of family life in my current “space” comforts me that she and others are still near, watching over me. They create a “home” for me wherever I go.

I did not want to Photoshop that connection. Part of the process that was necessary for me was to find the right location and feel my dad’s slides united with how I live today – a place within a place, a memory within a memory.