Lisa Tang Liu

Pieces of our united states

How do we cope with entropy? When something beloved is damaged, we can discard it, repair it, or accept it as it is.

That was my choice to make when a 2018 nor’easter came to Massachusetts and flooded my basement during a multi-day power outage. As my husband and I scooped up bucketfuls of water, my heart ached when I discovered the waterlogged binders of film negatives and slides among our belongings. One set, however, was only half submerged. It was a record of my husband and my 2005 cross-country road trip, our honeymoon delayed by a year. Because I didn’t have the financial resources or time to turn scan or print them back in the early 2000s, they waited on a shelf and I had never seen many of these photographic images in their original form. After the flood, this set of damaged film rested on a higher shelf as I procrastinated.

Lynne Breitfeller’s powerful photographic work, After the Fire: Water Damaged, inspired me to resurrect these American road trip images. I decided to finally scan the film. Some images escaped discernible harm, some completely emulsified, and some transformed into new incarnations. Presented here are the latter.

These photographs, my marriage, and the United States of America have all endured over the last two decades. We salvage and accept the changes in our lives. We seek beauty within its new form. And we own it. Only then can we make it better.