I TRY TO ERASE YOU BUT YOU'RE STILL HERE

I try to erase you but you’re still here is a collaborative project with photographs by Regina Mamou and writings by James Rigato. Raised in Michigan, Mamou and Rigato collectively respond to the idea of nostalgia based on location—as an origin of pain and yearning for the past. I try to erase you but you’re still here implies the simultaneous need to desire and dismiss juvenile experiences. The failure of trying to erase sentimental memories becomes source material for their project. In her photographic series, Mamou returns to a location she frequented with her family during her adolescence. Spending one week in relative seclusion in a cabin, she examines the construction and fragmentation of her memory in a familiar place. Through his writings, Rigato reconnects with relationships he developed in his teenage years. His writing utilizes techniques employed in romantic and lyrical poetry, and explores the naïveté and pang of young love.