Memory Is A Verb

By Elin Spring

Everyone knows that memory is as slippery as a fish. The way we constantly edit the incidents and accidents of our lives is one of the wonders of the human mind. Over time, our recollections form and fortify personal and family myths. Perhaps that explains why ten photographers named their collective “Memory is a Verb.” Each artist embraces the fluidity of memories in imaginative expressions about the passage of time and its reverberations: Elizabeth Bailey, Annette LeMay Burke, Dena Eber, Sarah Hadley, Diane Hemingway, Susan Lapides, Lori Ordover, Jennifer Pritchard, Rosalie Rosenthal, and Aline Smithson. “Memory is a Verb” will be on view at the Danforth Museum in Framingham, MA through May 24^th, 2026.

Installation of Elizabeth Bailey in Memory is a Verb, courtesy of the artist and Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (photo by Suzanne Révy).

Led by curiosity about her reclusive neighbor’s death, Elizabeth Bailey began investigating “The House Next Door.” Over time, her forays and her imagery deepened into a psychological study of loss and legacy. Through meditative and ruminating images and ephemera, Bailey ultimately asks how each of our distinctive lives can impact and resonate with one another.

Installation of Annette LeMay Burke in Memory is a Verb, courtesy of the artist and Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (photo by Suzanne Révy).

In “Memory Building,” Annette LeMay Burke projects her family photographs onto the surfaces of her childhood home and re-photographs the scene. Her inventive fusion of happy childhood memories onto the walls of her deceased parents’ home engrains their legacy and shares poignant memories of a cherished past.

Installation of Dena Eber in Memory is a Verb, courtesy of the artist and Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (photo by Suzanne Révy).

Dena Eber’s ethereal images in four series query our relationship to the physical landscapes that we experience as visitors and the ones we call home. In atmospheric photographs that blur time, her images seem to synthesize the past and present.

Installation of Sarah Hadley in Memory is a Verb, courtesy of the artist and Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (photo by Suzanne Révy).

Sarah Hadley’s “The Whispering Dark” is staged in a turn-of-the-century Italian house that evokes her childhood home on the top floor Boston’s famed Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, where her father served as Director. In richly toned B&W photographs, Hadley’s evocative renderings of pattern, texture, shadow and light recall her personal history within the intimate spaces of the museum, blurring history, imagination and memory.

Installation of Diane D. Hemingway in Memory is a Verb, courtesy of the artist and Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (photo by Suzanne Révy).

Diane Hemingway recalls her youthful exhilaration during outdoor family adventures in “The Wild Cosmos.” After the loss of several family members, she re-traced trips throughout rural Maine, seeking spiritual light to pierce her personal darkness. Her seductive color images inspire awe as they reconsider grief in a wonder-filled light.

Installation of Susan Lapides in Memory is a Verb, courtesy of the artist and Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (photo by Susan Lapides).

In “Time Capsule,” Susan Lapides explores the uncertain future of memories made with analog photography. Mining her archive of slide images from decades of magazine work, she mimicked the natural elements of tide and time to discover their effects. After two years immersed in sea water, her slides morphed into vivacious abstracts of color and form, revealing how time edits, reorders and remakes everything anew.

Installation of Lori Ordover in Memory is a Verb, courtesy of the artist and Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (photo by Suzanne Révy).

Lori Ordover’s wistful photographs are infused with muted palettes and hushed transitions. Embodying constant motion, her layered self-portraits within cityscapes convey a restless seeking and deep grasp of the beauty inherent in impermanence as she searches for a place that feels like home.

Installation of Jennifer Pritchard in Memory is a Verb, courtesy of the artist and Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (photo by Suzanne Révy).

In “Fragmentum,” Jennifer Pritchard uses flowers as a metaphor to reflect on the degeneration of memories. Into her vibrant, high contrast, close-up photographs of lovely blooms, she inserts abstracted pixels, echoing the distortion of memory reconstruction.

Installation of Rosalie Rosenthal in Memory is a Verb, courtesy of the artist and Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (photo by Suzanne Révy).

Rosalie Rosenthal’s “Easy Listening” contemplates the tension between two Florida’s: one that offers the comforts of new construction versus the ignored landscape that new construction is destroying. In this layered installation, her photographs emanate a warm, tender light redolent of ease set against the backdrop of beautiful, dying landscapes.

Installation of Aline Smithson in Memory is a Verb, courtesy of the artist and Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA (photo by Suzanne Révy).

Aline Smithson’s installation presents two distinctive portrait series. In “People I Don’t Know,” she endows narratives to unclaimed B&W portraits by photographing their pictures cradled in the hands of living semblances, thereby infusing a sense of belonging to those otherwise lost to memory. In “The Paradox of Portraiture,” she manipulates found studio portraits to include facial deformities that symbolize hidden aspects of identity. Smithson’s constructed portraits explore the idea of untold stories and consider how context can alter perceptions of identity and influence memory.

For more information about this exhibit and associated programming, go to: https://danforth.framingham.edu/

Feature Image: “Self Portrait, Night Sky” by Lori Ordover, from the exhibit Memory is a Verb, courtesy of the artist and the Danforth Museum, Framingham, MA.