Esther Parada
Past Recovery

Past Recovery

© Esther Parada Estate

Past Recovery
Past Recovery
ArtistAmerican, 1938–2005
CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Past Recovery
Date1979
PlaceUnited States
MediumGelatin silver prints with toning
DimensionsOverall: 96 × 144 in. (243.8 × 365.8 cm)
Credit LineThe Target Collection of American Photography, museum purchase funded by Target Stores
Object number82.74
Not on view

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Department
Photography
Object Type
Description

Esther Parada was trained as
a photographer, but her work, in its monumental scale and ambitious nature, is
not traditionally photographic. She gathers and blends texts and images, freely
altering both. She then forms the composite whole in installations that sometimes
encompass an entire room.



 



In Past Recovery she creates a history of her immediate and extended
family. She transforms a small photograph of the wedding anniversary of her
great-aunt and great-uncle into a giant family scrapbook, with photographs of
family members from various periods in their lives superimposed on their images
at the banquet.



 



“My sister’s face at age
two,” wrote Parada “is juxtaposed with her own image thirty years later and
with that of a great-aunt whom we never met, although family legend has it that
they were cast in the same mold. Similarly, I see other members of that family
gathering through the filter of my own cumulative experience.”
Past Recovery is a montage of personal
memories, with all stages in life’s cycle represented.




ProvenanceThe artist, Saxtons River, Vermont; purchased by MFAH, 1982.
Exhibition HistoryExhibited: "Big Pictures by Contemporary Photographers," Museum of Modern Art, New York, 14 April - 28 June 1983 (LN:83.23)

Exhibited: "Esther Parada: Photographs," Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids MI.26 October 1985 - 1 December 1985 (LN:85.35)

Exhibited: " Family Portraits", University Art Galleries, Wright State University, Dayton, OH22 Feb. - 20 March 1987 (LN:87.12)

Exhibited: "Reordered and Revealed: Photographic Work by Joyce Neiman, Lorie Novak, Ester Parado, and Ruth Thorne-Thomeson",The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 12 Dec. 1987 - 14 Feb. 1988, (LN87.36)

Exhibited "Evocative Presence: Twentieth Century Photographs in the Museum Collection", The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston February 27 - May 1, 1988
Exhibited "The Family" The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston May 29 - August 6, 1989

Exhibited "Target Collection of American Photography: A Century in Pictures",
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston December 3 - February 25, 2007
Austin Museum of Art May 19 - August 12, 2007
Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi June 5 - August 24, 2008

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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