RANDI MALKIN STEINBERGER
The Archive of Lost Memories
- - - - Transporting the contents of her studio from Los Angeles to North Adams, Randi Malkin Steinberger has created a workspace at MASS MoCA that functions simultaneously as an installation, archive, and cabinet of curiosities. The Archive of Lost Memories holds a treasure trove of the artist’s own photographs alongside images found at estate sales, antique markets, and on eBay. Steinberger gives these abandoned photographs new life by arranging, categorizing, and transforming them with materials such as thread and nail polish. Salvaging once-precious, now-forgotten moments, she prompts us to imagine the stories these images might tell.
in the digital era, delete an image? What histories have been lost? And how might time alter our perception of what is worth saving? - - - - Throughout Steinberger’s installation, nearly every surface is covered by photographs the artist rescued from obscurity. In preserving these humble images, she imbues them with the gravitas usually reserved for traditional archives. Featuring tintypes, snapshots, slides, and digital photos, Steinberger’s collection also provides a partial timeline of photographic advancements. Like any archivist, Steinberger classifies images, and on two large
“So many of these pictures are faded and out of focus. So are the expressions of those days that have gone by. Though indistinct and hazy, these photographs bring back to me those days, and help me to touch up the blessed images of my mind.” — u n k n o w n
FIG. 01
- - - - Steinberger’s engagement with found images began in the 1980s in Florence and Rome, where she studied photography. She frequented photo booths, retrieving torn and discarded photos that otherwise would have been lost to the street or the trash bin. Now protected in cellophane, these small prints are taped to the large glass doors in MASS MoCA’s Building 8 where light shines through the rips and cuts. These works ask questions that still resonate with Steinberger’s current practice: What does it mean to destroy or, MASS MoCA
doors and several shelves, she has organized tintypes by subject—with women, men, and babies grouped separately. Invented in the mid nineteenth century, tintypes required professional photographers but were fast to produce, inexpensive, and became widely popular. In the twentieth century personal handheld cameras allowed amateur photographers to commemorate everyday moments as well as monumental occasions. With this shift in technology, vernacular imagery became ubiquitous, and photographs less precious. - - - - A multitude of found snapshots are displayed in vitrines and on tables in the center of Steinberger’s installation. Most are embellished with the artist’s hand-sewn stitches. With thread she adds color, tracing outlines of anonymous figures. She often fills in any handwriting, memorializing names and notes, which may be the only The artist is using the space as an active studio while the installation is on view. ON VIEW
05 APR – 29 JUN 2025