An animation by Katy Shepherd

Created by animating family snapshots, evocative images from the artist’s childhood. The process of animation becomes a means for the artist to relive her past.

Film is sourced from four family snapshots. Evocative images from the artist’s childhood. They are around forty years old and show Katy, her sister, parents and family friends on happy days out or at home. Since they were taken both of Katy’s parents have died. Katy has created animated versions of the photos sourcing her own fragmented memories to breathe life into the snaps and attempt to resurrect the past. A sort of digital heaven.

Film was born out of just four photographs. Each was digitally manipulated to create frames that were assembled in a video editing programme to create film.

In Film the animation has a foot in both the camps of photography and film. The film appears to be shot by a hand-held cine camera or camcorder zooming in and out, gaining and losing focus. It starts by examining a still photo. As you look, different parts of the photo begin to come to life. Sometimes it all moves together, as if to mimic a movie. It seems to me that when you look at a family snapshot you bring a lot of your own needs and memories to the reading of that photo and that over the years, as your life moves on and family members are lost, these change. The result is a sort of Chinese whispers effect. The image involves you.