Comments on Une enfance (im)possible avec mon père/An (Im)possible Childhood with my Father, 2010-14

If one looks at a photo without knowing the context of its origins, it is a completely neutral object. It is only when one has a personal relationship to it or it is covered in commentary and text material that it can be called truthful or untruthful. 

I made use of that fact in my work Une enfance (im)possible avec mon père. After my father died I created new childhood memories using the few photos I have of him and those of my own childhood. I constructed a common history in which he was present right from the beginning though in real life my parents separated before I was born. The intensive work on the photo montages was also a profound involvement with my father and my own childhood yearnings.
Brigitte Konyen, 2014

In Une enfance (im)possible avec mon père, Brigitte Konyen reworks the entrenched conventions of the photo album that one is prone to accept without question. Everything was as it appears in the photo album. Using the few photographs she has of her father she generates a new, imaginary and desirable childhood in which her father is suddenly present whereas her real childhood experiences were marked by his absence.

Elke Krasny, 2014