The Nicéphore Niépce Museum houses an extensive collection of family photographs donated by amateur photographers. Mainly family albums dating from the early 18th century to the present day—photographs engraved on glass plates, Polaroids, small prints, or large formats—this collection includes a wide variety of materials. Once integrated into the collection, these photographs are preserved permanently by the museum. However, not all submitted photographs can be archived, and a selection must be made by the collection’s director. This photographic series follows the transformation of private memory into a shared cultural asset, tracing the journey of a photograph from a family album to the museum’s storage rooms. The images discarded in the trash bin of the Niépce Museum during the artist’s residency were gathered into a series of photograms, revealing the ghosts of intimate memory.

This work explores memory, the body, and the invisible layers of history through the legacy of Mikiyo Kanō (1940–2019), a pioneering historian of Japanese women’s history. Over three decades, Kanō au- thored Notes on the Home Front, a ten-volume series that examined the often-overlooked participa- tion of women in wartime Japan.

Among her personal belongings, numerous scarves were found—objects that had touched her skin, accompanied her movements, and quietly absorbed the texture of her daily life. Using the photographic technique of lumen printing, which captures light directly on photosensitive paper without a camera, these scarves were exposed to light, allowing their presence to be imprinted in time.

The resulting images are not simply traces of fabric, but imprints of absence, memory, and resistance. In engaging with these intimate materials, the work offers a space to reencounter forgotten narratives and to question how personal and political histories continue to intertwine..