DeSouza’s complicated familial history, which saw their family traverse three former colonies—India, Goa, and Kenya—and two former colonial powers—Britain and Portugal—provides fertile soil for these explorations. The artist developed all four series while in a retrospective frame of mind: The Lost Pictures while mourning their mother’s passing in 2004; and both Flotsam and Elegies for Futures Past while mourning their father’s passing in 2018. The installation is also interspersed with an experimental commentary by deSouza in dialogue with the artist Anne Walsh.

DeSouza expands our understanding of the photographic image as a vehicle for memory through multiple artistic strategies, from intervening in the physical processes of film photography, to digital manipulation, to repeatedly photographing the same spot over time. Cumulatively, the four photographic series mingled with deSouza’s commentary calls our attention to the malleable nature of both memory and the photographic image. Analogous to one another, they are both subject to accumulations and losses that result from the vagaries of time, physical environment, an individual’s changing circumstances, or shifts in historical perspective.