At the Griffin Museum of Photography,
Preston Gannaway: Remember Me offers a deeply personal reflection on grief, memory, and the passage of time. On view from July 31 to September 6, 2026, the exhibition presents the work of Preston Gannaway, recipient of the Director’s Prize in the museum’s 2025 Juried Members Exhibition. The project centers on a relationship that has unfolded over more than two decades, tracing the life of a young boy in New Hampshire after the death of his mother when he was only four years old.
The series began in 2006, when Gannaway was assigned to document a family facing terminal illness. She photographed Carolynne St. Pierre as she underwent treatment for cancer while raising her children with her husband, Rich. After Carolynne’s death, Gannaway continued returning to New Hampshire, following the family’s life as it evolved in the absence of the mother who feared her youngest child would not remember her. Through these long-term visits, the photographer witnessed what Carolynne could not: her son EJ growing into adulthood, carrying both the presence and absence of memory.
Rather than focusing on dramatic moments, the work builds through quiet details—domestic interiors, changing landscapes, gestures between father and son, and the subtle rhythms of ordinary life. These images create a layered visual essay where time itself becomes visible. Photography, in this context, functions not simply as documentation but as a fragile space between remembrance and forgetting. EJ’s own reflections, often marked by an inability to recall his mother directly, deepen the emotional complexity of the project and underscore the uncertain nature of memory.
Gannaway’s broader practice often examines the relationship between personal histories and larger social landscapes, and
Remember Me stands as one of her most significant long-term works. The early chapters of the project earned the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, while the completed monograph was published in 2023. Her photographs are held in major collections including the High Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. At the Griffin Museum, this exhibition becomes less a record of loss than a meditation on how photographs hold space for what remains, even as memory shifts with time.
Image:
© Preston Gannaway