Stafford Hiroshi Smith

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Ancestry in Progress

These collages are my way of seeking to join the disparate pasts of my bi-racial heritage. They are made from photographs old enough that most of the people depicted in them have become lost to time. The photographs speak of ages more foreign than distant lands; colonialism, tycoons, plantations, samurai, the jazz age, poverty, and world war. They represent the legacy of two families separated by a vast ocean who had no idea that one day their destinies would intersect.

I try to make sense out these faces peering at me through a sepia haze. They have become empty signs that point to people that are no longer. They are relevant to me only by the names scrawled on their backs and the albums from which they have fallen. Like the early paleontologists assembling the first dinosaur skeletons, I must use my imagination to fill in the gaps, taking liberties to build narratives coherent to me. These old photos are combined with other photos gleaned from thrift shops and garage sales, as well as my own photos to help me understand who I am in the surreal context of America. I am constructing a narrative of my ancestry that is imagined and fanciful, but it is my own.

The images are collaged digitally but finalized through an alcohol transfer process onto handmade watercolor paper.

Past Artists on the Lam show: SLAYSIAN (2020)

10th Anniversary Message:

In the last 10 years I've learned that everyone has a story to tell even if they don’t know it or feel that it’s worthwhile. Stories are what make pictures interesting. When we find a picture that has no story we start to wonder what the story is. Boring pictures are the ones that don’t tell a story.