The Spider
Patrick Chen
My project explores a childhood memory through an animated graphic narrative that uses photographs from family photo albums reconstructed by my illustrations. The main element is photographs from my childhood used to represent the development of maturity. The main theme of the narrative is overcoming fear that stems from my memory of a spider that became an embodiment of terror. In this video, this spider represents the fear and follows me as I grow up by appearing in various photographs from my childhood. As I continue to age, my reactions towards this spider diminishes; the fear that once caused me to run away translates into curiosity and understanding as I mature. Once I am able to confront the spider, I am no longer affected by it as I was initially. The goal of my thesis is to inspire others to revisit those fragmented childhood memories and look back at their own photo albums to create stories to tell. Memories from childhood are hard to recall in its entirety and by making a story out of those fragments, it further enhances how precious our memory, our photographs, and our stories are.