RORY HEJTMANEK
The Definition of Time

time /tīm/noun : the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present and future regarded as a whole.

I have been photographing my family for 12 years. I am interested in durational work and its ability to capture cycles: life cycles, death cycles, shifts in identities over time and stories as seen through multiple generations. This is one of the great gifts of photographing a family, especially a big, sprawling one: the way all of it is mixed up together. The past that is carried and the future already bursting into being. Collisions of memory and youth, aging and becoming.

Through family I explore the question of belonging. Family is a shared reality handed down - a story, a set of given circumstances. Individual identity emerges within and pushes against the container of family. I am fascinated with capturing these moments of emergence. Some of them are filled with power, others burden, others with the ache of feeling alone in a room full of loved ones.

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