Amy Kozlowski

di·vorce/dəˈvôrs/the legal dissolution of a marriage by a court or other competent body.

what does divorce do to a family?

what does family even mean? or look like?

my physical mind map traces the idea of family between old and new photographs

fam·i·ly /ˈfam(ə)lē/a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.

so is my family me and my parents?

or does my “family” change depending on whose house I’m at?

two nights at mom’s house, two nights at dads, two nights at mom’s house, two nights at dads

every day, week, month and year of my life since I was 4 years’ old

why do I care if my parents are or aren’t together?

to·geth·er/təˈɡeT͟Hər/into companionship or close association.

what did I lose by them not being together?

nothing.

what did I gain?

I’m not sure.

I spend so much time physically collaging the ideas of my childhood

only to physically separate my parents on the gallery wall

why do I care so much about something I will never be able to change?

what did their divorce do to me?

why am I afraid to know why their marriage didn’t work?

mar·riage/ˈmerij/the legally recognized union of two people as partners in a relationship.

“your father and I just didn’t love each other anymore”

is this answer something I will be satisfied with?

there has never been closure for me

why did they get divorced?

is it my fault?

no

if it was my fault they wouldn't have spent all these years working together to make sure I’m happy

or to make sure I had as normal of a childhood as possible

or to give me everything I have ever needed and more in life

or get me through college, together

they did a lot of things together, but separately, for me their only child

on·ly child /ˈōnlē/ /CHīld/a person with no siblings, biological nor adopted

I held everything in because I was an only child with no one to talk to about it

who wants to talk about divorce to their own divorced parents?

why do I want to know?

why do I want to care?

why am I afraid to ask?

why am I trying to stick something back together that I know nothing about?

why am I trying to make sense of their divorce?

I know nothing about their marriage.

I only see my childhood

I only see a memory represented through a combination of grayscale and color images

I only see a few moments of them together

emphasized through a cut out Polaroid frame alluding to the traditional framed photograph

I only see this idea I question as family reconstructed through a photograph.