Hannah Koenig   |   2014   |   Printmaking & International Relations

“Runners-up” was created from a photograph of my sister and I, taken by my father during the season that my sister and I were on a hockey team coached in part by my mother. I made the image larger and broke it down into individual flat colors, building it back up one layer at a time. On a technical level, separating the colors by hand and adding them back together one at a time created a saturated image in a different way than the original photograph did, which brought up the question of when to determine that the print was complete. How many colors are necessary to achieve full saturation? Was I jumping too quickly in degree from the lightest values to the darkest values? In this way, the print created pressure to decrease the degree of separation between the colors I used, resulting in an overwhelming sense of the possibilities I didn’t explore. On a conceptual level, undergoing this process of recreating a family portrait prompted me to think about memory and question its accuracy. Was I filling my memory of the moment in the snapshot with information taken from viewing the photo years later, or did I actually remember the experience? As it turns out, I’m less concerned with answering that question, and more troubled by the idea that I will never be wholly satisfied with a project of this sort, no matter how many color separations are included.