Annette LeMay Burke: Memory Building
My parents died within a few months of each other. They lived in the same house for 60 years, from the day they were married until their deaths. Once they were gone, I was left with my grief, memories of our lives together, and all their possessions, including a well-organized archive of family photos.
In my series, Memory Building, I projected those vernacular photographs onto the surfaces of my childhood home in the same locations that they were originally made and rephotographed the scene. By fusing photos from the past onto the present-day walls, I unearthed six decades of engrained memories and captured my family’s vanishing presence that once permeated our mid-century suburban home—the container for so much of my personal history.
Constructing the projected tableaus made the memories more substantive for me, provided solace for my grieving and created a new family pictorial legacy for future generations. With so many formative experiences rooted and intertwined within this building, saying goodbye to it was also saying goodbye to my parents. Even as the rooms were literally whitewashed in preparation for new owners, my memories continued to resonate within the walls.
Welcome
Rumpus Room
Chuck's Corvette
Christening Day
Dining Room Dinghy
My Playhouse
Birthday Party
The Hearth
Girl Scouts
Garage Workshop
Snuggies, Remote and Buck
Baking Cookies
Bio
Annette LeMay Burke is a photographic artist and Northern California native who lives in the heart of Silicon Valley. A longtime observer of the evolution of the western landscape, Burke’s work is about connection, especially in relationship to the land and place. She is interested in how our environment changes over time and the telltale artifacts — both tangible and temporal — that are left behind. Burke received a BA in Geology from the University of California at Berkeley. After a decade long career in high-tech, she now focuses on her artistic practice.
In 2022, Burke was selected for Critical Mass Top 50. In 2021, she was awarded first place in the Lenscratch Vernacular Photography Exhibition and won the Imago Lisboa Photography Festival in Portugal.
Burke’s work is exhibited widely at institutions such as Center for Photographic Art, Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Candela Gallery, Griffin Museum of Photography and Los Angeles Center for Photography.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times, L.A. Times, Hyperallergic, Sierra Club Magazine, Newsweek Japan, Elle Decor Italy, Fraction, All About Photo, KATALOG and The Riv Magazine.
Burke’s monograph, Fauxliage: Disguised Cell Phone Towers of the American West, was published by Daylight Books in 2021.