Remember Who You Once Were by Elizabeth Alderliesten

Sometimes life gets in the way.

To appropriate a familiar analogy, if our life is road, then there are many twists, turns and diversions on the hopefully long journey from beginning to the ultimate end point.

Careers, family, children or partners. Illness, bereavements.

Stopping points.

Each demand forcing us to pause and take stock, to give a little of ourselves in the name of others. 

Whether willingly or not, these actions design the maps of our lives.

In Remember Who You Once Were, Dutch photographer Elizabeth Alderliesten examines the idea of self, memory, regeneration.

Things that get lost along the way.

A journey examined, a meditation recounted.

Through a sequence of gently toned images, we are allowed to see glimpses of the natural world, fragments of self.

A eulogy for the past.

Hands, stretched and shaped.

Reaching out, scratching the sky.

Confirming that there are indeed, no limits

Personal sculpture for an audience of one.

A change is in the air.

Landscape and nature. 

Trees through water.

The veins of a leaf.

Interiors.

The corner of a room, wallpaper and a chandelier. Bedroom or cell?

The hazy view of a doorway in shadow. 

A promise of light beyond the darkness.

Memories of the body.

The curve of a back, kissed by light.

Fragments. 

Flesh, still vital and desirable.

Slowly devoured by shadow and the erosion of confidence.

To be lost on your pilgrimage through life's hinterland, waylaid by its detours, unable to navigate your way back to your main path. 

Restrained by demands of others.

Crushed by the weight of opinion and anchored by obligation.

These are the hurdles and projectiles that test and form us.

They are all part of the contract, check the small print.

Whilst much of this self is given freely, some is taken. 

Sometimes cruelly and with impunity.

Other times unintentionally. The duty of the dependant. 

And yet to reroute any one of these detours...

Then the map would be rewritten and as much light as shadow would be restructured.

A butterfly beats it wings...

And then at what could possibly be the dying of the light, a dragonfly.

Rebirth and reinvention.

We cannot change what has gone before but we can have some degree of control over what is to come.

Remember who you once were, imagine what you could become.

You are still in there and you have a voice.

As beautiful as its subject matter, Alderliesten's debut displays a lightness of touch found only in a handmade book. 

French folded Fedrigoni paper stock, hand assembled using the Japanese stab binding technique.

A tender guide book for those lost and those finding their way back.

Remember Who You Once Were is self published in an edition of 150 copies.with a special edition of 10 copies each of which includes a unique print.

https://www.elizabethalderliesten.nl/book-remember-who-you-once-were