thtk (2010-present)

(Too Hard to Keep) is a growing archive of photos too painful to live with any longer. This repository is a place for photographs, photo-objects, and digital files to exist without being destroyed. Site-specific installations continue to be curated out of the expanding collection. Participants may dictate whether the photographs submitted to the archive may be exhibited in the future with other submissions or are photographs that are only to be displayed face down.

In March 2010 Jason Lazarus began to build an archive of photographs deemed too hard to keep; a project he says he has committed to for life. To date, submissions have included a variety of photographic materials: photo albums, slide, negatives, jpegs, and photo objects depicting friends, family, pets, interiors, lovers, and landscapes. Lazarus encourages donors to the archive to indicate whether the submission may be exhibited and published or if it is to remain private. Anonymity is maintained with all donors. In its first three years the archive grew to include more than 3,000 donations. SF Camerawork hosted a drop box to collected donations to forward to Lazarus from October 2010 to March 2013. This monograph represents a selection of more than 50 images from the archive and includes an essay by acclaimed art historian Abigail Solomon-Godeau. This monograph was produced in conjunction with the SF Camerawork exhibition T.H.T.K (San Francisco) (January 16 - March 16, 2013).