Pieces of Home, but Not

In the series “Pieces of Home, but Not” Mitchell shows what it is like to travel back to your hometown years after you have left, to find it alarmingly different than you remember. Her work questions the role of physical space as connected to memory and how sense of place affects one’s identity. When your home becomes strangely unrecognizable, is it still home? Is that label still part of your existence? Wandering the streets of her childhood neighborhood at night, Mitchell shows scenes of quiet abandonment. The images portray a journey of escape… an escape from childhood memories or perhaps an uncertain future. Originally shot on 35mm film, the negatives were scanned and then printed with toner on a modest laser printer on archival matte paper. Mitchell then used a technique that physically removed part of the image underneath, rendering an end result that is one-of-a-kind—unlike many forms of the photographic medium, which are highly reproducible. This hands-on surface treatment only allows the artist partial control over the scratch-like aesthetic. This can be read as an act of reclamation, with hope of restoring the loss of control of time long passed. Returning home seems like it would be a precious opportunity to revisit the past, though “Pieces of Home, but Not” reminds us that just as objects will be lost or forgotten, structures will become weathered, and the memories—pieces of home—will be all that you have left.