12 December 14 - 20, 2023 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Telling a Thousand Words Dallas photographer Adrian Omar displays the power of memory through family photo albums. BY SAMANTHA THORNFELT P hotography has always been something subliminal through- out Adrian Omar’s life. Like a typical proud mom, Omar’s mother was adamant about documenting his life through photos. And like a typical awkward kid, Omar was ada- mantly against the idea of being captured on camera. Despite Omar’s juvenile cries of “I don’t want to take a picture, Mom!,” his mother would convince him to sit down, face the lens and smile. Now a professional photographer himself, Omar is grateful for the numerous family al- bums filled with memories and milestones. Photos of birthdays, Christmases and family gatherings each act as evidence of past lives lived. “Taking photos and archiving — it’s what we can do as everyday peo- ple to prolong our own histories,” Omar says. Years of watching his mom take, print and laminate her own photos made Omar a photographer-in- training from a young age, and later inspired him to pursue a de- gree in photography at the Univer- sity of North Texas. As a student, Omar began using his camera to document himself and intimate as- pects of his own life. Rather than freezing moments in time, these projects revealed identities not first seen at face value. Early series like The Recalibra- tion of One’s Self (The Relationship of Adrian and Ian) discuss Omar’s split identities between his every- day self and life as a sex worker. An- other project, The Apprehension of Sentimentality: Returning Home and the Patterns You Find, chronicles Omar’s re- turn to his childhood home, where he ex- plored relationships to his queerness, growth and domestic life. Exploring these connections and conjunctions within his own life helped Omar learn more about himself and his self-perceptions. But rather than satisfy his artistic identity, these discoveries made him want to dig deeper. “Discovering myself in the present was important to me, it was important to docu- ment my own stories and sources of self, but I knew there was more in archiving,” Omar says. “That’s what really kickstarted my cur- rent journey with that.” Omar found himself once again return- ing to his childhood home to sift through the family albums he had cherished over the years. Within the endless laminated pages, he found connections and relation- ships within each separate photograph. Rather than just simple familial relations among the photographs’ subjects, Omar knew each captured moment had an even more significant relation to time and memory itself. “I was once told that when we think about memories, the brain kind of treats it as like a file that gets deleted and then com- pletely rewritten from scratch to form the idea that you now associate with it,” Omar says. “So truly every time you think about someone, it is getting farther and farther from that original point in time you had that memory. I think photography is that ripple in time, and having that be so contra- dictory to what we might remember our- selves is something really fascinating.” Through his deep dive into the family ar- chives, Omar discovered that decades of growth, loss and the spaces in between had all been tucked away in books, drawers and folders. Each photo and document itself marked a key point in a family member’s life — a large family gathering, the birth of a child, the death of a sibling. Omar did not know or remember every person or event captured in the photos, but found overlap- ping themes across his family’s history in each one. Today, Omar has taken the idea of over- lapping the relations literally, and has visu- ally translated it through photo overlays. The time spent scanning physical prints into digital copies and editing them in Photo- shop gives Omar hours of one-on-one time with his art and the familial subjects it me- morialized. Since starting his Recapture series in early 2023, Omar has formatted retellings of family trips to the Mexican border, birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese and JC Penney’s studio family portraits. This type of hands-on, archival art has shown Omar that there is more to learn not just about the functions of memory, but about one’s own relationship to whom and what we capture in memories. “The process is about giving myself that room to breathe with photos, to get emo- tional with photos, to allow myself to get mad at people in photos, to be like, ‘Girl, what were we doing here?’ and not being able to do anything about it,” Omar says. “In the beginning, I would get so emotional after each round of photos. [...] And now it’s like, ‘OK, we can deal with those things and we’re able to move in a more fluid and healthier way about it.” Though not every project focuses on Omar himself, he has found it to be just as, if not more, impactful as his self-portraits se- ries. By showcasing the stories of those clos- est to him, he feels he is best able to physically capture the persistence and im- portance of memory for those who may not know or remember its significance. Despite her “not being one to dwell on things,” much of Omar’s archival work fo- cuses on his mom, her life and her family. By working with her to obtain old photos and identify those in them, Omar feels they have both gained insight into the shared history of their family, as well as each other’s journeys. “I’ve gotten to learn more about specific instances in my mom’s life and how they’ve impacted her, and I think she’s learned a bit about me from my art,” Omar says. “I think for both of us, we’ve seen how to take an ob- ject, a memory, and carry it on an almost personified level.” As of now, Omar’s mom is one of the few in his family who has seen his family photo book-inspired pieces. As Omar is nearing his first round of scans and layouts, he is getting closer to sending out the first round of archives to his entire ex- tended family — a milestone he has been working toward for months. He says the most rewarding part of the artistic process will be to send the photos to others in his family whom he has never been in contact with, but is still “definitely familiar with.” “It’s almost like meeting a per- son and saying, ‘You know nothing about me, but I know everything about you,” Omar says. “A lot of that older generation in my family, I just admire them so much for ev- erything they’ve done for me to be able to even create work like this. So if that’s something I can give them in return, hell yeah I want to do it.” At the end of his digital archive series, Omar hopes to have every- thing digitized and accessible for his family. While the series’ process and themes obviously touch on a lot of personal subjects, Omar be- lieves its impact and intent lay outside of his inner circle. Through the universal fo- cus of familial identity and history, Omar aspires to display the power of memory. He says some are often apprehensive to do so, as family memories don’t often seem wor- thy of conversation. However, by starting the “mundane” conversation, Omar feels others are given the ability to be comfort- able in their own experiences, backgrounds and growth. “The mundane is worth discussing, is worth exploring, is worth doing,” Omar says. “Let’s bond everyone together under that universal care of giving a fuck about each other, about our families. [...] We need those productive conversations about where we come from and how it makes us. It all starts with a sense of intimacy, of em- pathy that we find within ourselves and those we love.” Adrian Omar Photographer Adrian Omar learned a love for archiving memories from his mother. ▼ Culture
