«Revising History is a study on photography, the nature of the vernacular image, and its role in creating cultural allegories. The work intends to create a dialogue about the photograph as simulacrum- the moment versus the referent. To engage these layered truths I replace the central figure in found mid-century (1940’s –1960’s) vernacular photographs with an image of myself. In doing so I effectively hijack the memory and create a “counterfeit” image. Most do not stop to think about the ubiquitous nature of the camera or the impact of pictures, but snapshots now intervene in almost every aspect of life — the pinnacle and the banal. The danger in this is we seem to have forgotten that the picture liberates the moment from reality, erases vantage, and is inevitable susceptible to co-opted or underwritten fantasy.»
Personal images typically chronicle joyous or monumental events like birthdays and weddings, and people so often point to vintage photos of smiling teens and happy couples as evidence of a happier, simpler era. “I discovered that each of us revise our own memories in favor of something we think we see in our photographs. Boring parties are redrafted into amazing evenings, our youth reformed into carefree epochs,” Greenburg says. “Reality is replaced with a nostalgic appropriation.”
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