Toast the Bread Twice

MFA Student

Major: Photography

Graduation Year: 2019

Artist Statement:

As a youth, photographer, Lauren Fedorchak struggled with being overweight. Thinking that this advice would alleviate the issue, her grandmother told her to toast bread twice, implying that by burning it, there would be less caloric intake. This is one example of the strange and confounding incidents that she experienced growing up.

Toast the Bread Twice, 2019, is a series of black and white prints that investigates the idea that trauma is inherited through genetics and environmental factors. Through her photographic explorations and the use of several camera formats, Fedorchak photographs places which hold a deep resonance to her family’s history, objects that are representational, and her mother, sister, and herself as people who have suffered from the intergenerational transmission of trauma.

Within the images, the past and present are suggested without indication of an actual timeframe. The timelessness of the images supports a level of uncertainty both within the imagery and also within the dynamics of family. Through her photographic vision, Fedorchak constructs a cryptic narrative, exposing unpleasant memories and secrets, kept hidden, until now.