Back’s Memento addresses how memories that are dependent on photographs are limited and easily distorted. The alteration and distortion of memories starts the moment the camera’s shutter button is pressed. As soon as a photograph leaves the hands of the one who photographed it, those who were photographed, or people related to them, it becomes a neutral visual image divorced from their memories and can become an object onto which all kinds of subjective interpretations and meanings can be projected. For this piece, Back collected photographs, which once belonged to numerous individuals but had been stripped of their function as mementos, and placed them into a totally new context. From the tens of thousands of mounted slides he bought at flea markets in different cities in the U. S., Back selected two thousand seven hundred slides and developed them. Then, he had eight people, including himself, choose and arrange eight photographs.