A Million Stories 

Jack Ravi | Scotland, United Kingdom 

How does one create a visual representation of history? Jack Ravi collages the myriad of stories held in the archives as a way of juxtaposing the complex, rich history of remembering with the simultaneous fact of forgetting and obfuscation. He writes: “This work is about storytelling and oral traditions as a means to create community and bring people together. There are eight fragments of photos of gatherings, large or small, public or intimate, places where stories would have been told, and memories created. I tried to choose photographs that carried a sense of belonging. I included photographs of public gatherings, like parades, ceremonies, county fairgrounds and children at the Maypole dance. I used a variety of classes gathered in front of the school (Breadloaf, Middlebury High School, Cody, Addison, Bristol, Case Street). I also tried to represent groups in social settings like music bands, baseball players, firefighters, farmers picking apples and bathers at Lake Dunmore. “All of these images weaved together create a background of faded memories. The tree in itself is a symbol of knowledge and it stands to represent the power of stories. But combining the image of a tree with generations and generations of faces also draws an ancestral family tree, deeply rooted in oral narration, and in stories transmitted from generation to generation. “The writing at the top is also barely visible, like an old story that was partly forgotten. I transcribed part of an interview with Jessica Swift, who in 1975, reminisced about her father coming downstairs at nine o’clock to read the Bible to his children, lying on the floor in front of the fireplace. And he would read from the Greek, and then he’d close the book on his finger and then he would tell stories about the ancient word, Samaria, and Babylon, and Persia, and Egypt and Alexandria. ‘Father had a perfectly beautiful voice.’ If this collage could speak, it would sound like a million voices telling a million stories at the same time.”