I have devoted my life to the passing of time. My work explores photography’s ability to preserve, distort, and reframe our understanding of the past. By revisiting personal archives, I examine how images function as evidence and illusion—fragments of truth that shift over time.
Photography is a slippery medium. The photograph compels something in us, pulls us to look, and to pay attention. The image becomes a representation of a real moment that happened in time, frozen and removed from the original context. While a photograph attempts to hold onto memory, I search for where both images and recollections fail us. What we lose in trying to remember is found in the making. By reworking with images from my archive, I discover something new in the gaps. This tension is one I carry in my practice, working abstractly with a variety of materials, surfaces, and alternative processes. I reach for distance, a fading memory, an ephemeral gesture. I examine what lingers and what vanishes, searching for meaning in the spaces between presence and absence.
IG: @moonicahamilton
monica.hamilton@uconn.edu
Monica Hamilton is an artist from New England. As a photographer, she is interested in the tension caused by the difference between the truth of the photograph and the thing itself. Often, she’s known for collecting more shells than fit in her pocket. She is a current Studio Art MFA candidate at the University of Connecticut and graduating in May of 2025. She holds a B.S. in Studio Art from Skidmore College, has participated in residencies at Vermont Studio Center and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, and is the recipient of the Zachs Award.
