Catherine Panebianco

No Memory is Ever Alone

“No Memory is Ever Alone” is a visual conversation between me and my dad. Every Christmas, he used to bring out a box of slides that he photographed in his late teens and early twenties and made us view them with an old projector on our living room wall, telling the same stories every year. It was a consistent memory from a childhood where we moved a lot and I never felt like I had a ‘steady place’ to live and create memories.

I realised that, by holding the slides in my current ‘landscape’, I created not only a connection between his life and mine but a trail of memories that each had its own association for both of us. A lot of these slides are of my mom; they were together almost sixty years. She passed away, but I feel like her spirit and all the spirits of the past are constantly around us. These little vignettes of family life comfort me that she and others are still near, watching over me. They create a ‘home’ for me wherever I go.

Part of the process that was necessary for me was to find the right location and physically unite my dad’s slides with how I live today to create a place within a place, a memory within a memory. However, I did not want to use Photoshop for this connection.

I hope these tiny fragments of my family’s life spark a sliver of recollection in your own mind.”

Catherine Panebianco (Kitimat, Canada, 1964) is an artist who lives in Jamestown, New York. With her work, she consistently longs for a sense of place, catches hold of memories and chases the spirits of those we currently love. In her pictures, Panebianco explores how we connect with others, with our past, and with ourselves.

Panebianco received numerous awards: in 2021, she was a semi-finalist for the National Portrait Gallery’s Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition in London; in 2020, she received the LensCulture Critics Choice Top Ten Award, the CENTER’s Project Launch Award; in 2019, she was included into Photolucida’s Critical Mass Top 50 for her series “No Memory is Ever Alone”. She also was a finalist for The Hopper Prize; 1st place winner in the International Photography Awards for Fine Art; a finalist at the National Photography Awards for the Texas Photographic Society and a San Francisco Bay International Photography Competition Portfolio Award.

Panebianco’s work has been exhibited in the U.S. and internationally as well as it being featured in Black + White Magazine, The Guardian, la Repubblica and Lenscratch.