My complicated relationship with photographs began when I was young; I remember tearing images out of publications and bringing them to my dad prepared with questions. I was raised by a single father, and seeing photographs portraying the “wholeness” of family contradicted my reality. Those psychological impressions provoked my curiosity and continue directing my interests to date. Like those we love, photographs may deceive us. Visual analysis and interpretation can lead us to one or many truths; a single frame can beg many questions. The negotiation that emerges between recognizing and challenging said truths directs my approach to the medium. Lie and Smile reveals the tension of uncertainty as I interrogate the estranged relationship I had with my mother. In the wake of her death in late 2017, I was flooded with brutal internal questions — Did I love my mother? Did I even know her at all? How could I possibly “miss” what I never had? I meditated on those questions and began investigating the lived experiences that directed her persistence to conceal years of endured trauma. Familial narratives aid me in rendering a visual elegy mirroring the process of mining my mother's archive and matrilineal succession. As I retrace her history, I'm thinking of how my considerations might molt into visual metaphors for circumstances and underscore the precarious bond between photographic record and the fragmented, abstract nature of memory. I produce diaristic constellations employing visual tension, and unstable transition, as projections on the past and future. Through responding to my mother's archive and absence, I construct prosthetic memories to reinterpret her life and embalm her death—framing versions of my mother to confront or forgive sustains my negotiation with her ghost.