THE SNIPER PAUSED SO HE COULD WIPE HIS BROW - Sean Lotman

Memory has a fascinating way of forming narrative. We believe we recall something as it happened only to find evidence that events were in fact rather different. I'm intrigued by the flaw of misremembered pasts. Whatever facts are attached to an experience inevitably fade, while strange details are exaggerated and given primacy. I wanted to give form to this bewilderment with The Sniper Paused So He Could Wipe His Brow (The M Editions & IBASHO, 2021). Comprising 95 photographs drawn from twenty countries, shot over the span of 15 years, all of them handmade darkroom color prints taken with a Diana f+ toy camera, the images feel rooted out from any discernible reality, akin to recollected dreams (which have the same eerie elusiveness of long-past moments). The book is designed in three parts, with a split binding in Parts I & III, so that the reader becomes a collaborator, mixing and matching different sets of photographs in a kind of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure experience. Thus, every time you engage with the book, your reading of it will be unique depending on how you arrange the book's flaps. Sniper reminds the reader that our understanding of things evolve with time and nothing is quite like we remember it.