Both Gaye Chan's installation in the invitational exhibit "Reconstructing Memories" and her book launching of "Waikiki: A History of Forgetting and Remembering" (written by Andrea Feeser; University of Hawai'i Press) are artfully synchronized, even serendipitous.

It's a double validation for Chan, whose photographic and installation works for the past 20 years have been about how we edit memory and history.

Born in Hong Kong in 1957, she immigrated to Hawai'i in 1969. She has taught at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa since 1991 and was recently appointed chairwoman of the art department. Chemotherapy and surgery last year have not slowed her down — much. Despite the fact that her "body is taking a beating," as she puts it, she remains active in her examination of art and politics.

Chan's photographic work is as meticulous as it is maniacal in detail. She can puncture thousands of tiny holes through photographs or, in the case of this recent exhibit, digitally manipulate a historic image, pixel by tiny pixel. Aside from altered archival photographs, there also is an interactive component. Chan's photographic work is set inside an alcove with a desk and a computer. Viewers can link to stories about different locations from www.downwindproductions.com.

"Waikiki: A History of Forgetting and Remembering" is a coffee-table- sized book of beautiful sepia-toned and colored images. But there's a twist. The text (comprised of both critical history and investigative journalism) aligns with the images in a provocative way and focuses on the overdevelopment of Waikiki. "My work has always been about how we edit both history and memory, and photography's role in that," she says.

Q. What sparked your initial interest in photography?

A. I've been a photographer since my late teens. I remember a project I did in my first photography class in college. I was really fascinated by how every time we frame a picture, it means that there are a trillion things that we leave out rather than what we include. That decision has always been so compelling to me — what the photographer, the writer or the artist decided wasn't worth including. ... As I've gotten older, I see how it applies to politics — who is remembered in history and who's not. For that matter, who is remembered in family history or at parties — who is seen and who is not. ... I apply that to my own artwork, as well as my collaborative work.

Q. Do you think being more visible in the world changed our values?

A. Prior to industrialization, people had lives, and it didn't matter whether they were seen or not. Now, being visible is one of the few ways we confer value and worth in someone's life. Now, it's gotten very competitive in terms of who is recognized for their work. Because of capitalism and disenfranchised labor, people are working for things that they have no connection to. Worth is conferred differently because there is no connection to reality.

It's an artificial value system. Within that system, visibility is one of the very few ways, beside monetary worth, that gives life meaning. I'm interested in the mechanism of remembrance and why we choose to remember certain things.

Q. Have you found any connection among what is generally left out?

A. Yes, we live in a completely hierarchal society. When we say, "Frank Lloyd Wright made this building," he did not. What about all the people that actually made the building? Where's their history? Until we recognize who we've made invisible, it's always going to remain a hierarchal system and serve the elites — whether it's the nation, state, wealthy or whatever. There's a separation of mind and body — the idea versus the people that actually built them. There is also a hierarchy in the separation of art and craft that I think is very troubling. It's changed my consciousness day to day. I ask myself whom I engage in my life. We are just raising questions and changing ideas about how you think about information. My own personal interest is I hope that every time you look at a picture, you wonder "why am I looking at this picture? Why was this picture taken? Kept?"

Q. You are involved in a medium that has only recently been recognized as art form and now is rapidly changing with the advent of digital imagery and the Internet. Is that making a difference in your work?

A. Photography took off in the 1980s. Contemporary artists, particularly those not trained in photography, like Cindy Sherman, really utilized the power of photography. They pushed photography into museums in a way that people who were trained in photography were not able to do — because it still seemed to be too craft- or media-specific. I've been using digital media for a while, but it's a completely different process than the darkroom. The Web site (www.down windproductions.com) is imagined to be art outside the gallery and has been a five-year project. It explores what digital media is all about, as well as my other project with Nandita Sharma, www.nomoola.com, a noncapitalist freestore also known as FreeBay.

Although the prints (in the exhibit) are digital, I'm still working in an analog mindset. I'm making the same body of work I made in the darkroom — adhering to the color palette and using found images rather then my own. I manipulate it differently now, because the whole process is different. I have found that transition to be very difficult. In the darkroom, when I do burning and dodging — selectively altering the image by lightning or darkening certain spots — I have maybe a quarter of a second. It's hit-and-miss. Most of it is craft, but some of it is a beautiful accident. In the computer, you don't have those accidents. It's deliberate choices, pixel by pixel. The three prints (in the exhibit) are bigger than my earlier ones. Now, I want them to be life-sized.

Q. Where do you get the photographs you use in your work?

A. The three in this show are all from the Hawai'i State Library Archives. I scan and manipulate them fairly extensively on the computer. In the book, there are lots of images from the State Archive as well as the Bishop Museum Library and archives, the University of Hawai'i Hamilton Library Hawaiian Collection and my own collection from antique stores, garage sales, gifts and eBay. I am always looking. What I love, even about these official sources, is that 90 percent of the images come with no information, or it's pretty damned sparse.

Freelance writer Victoria Gail-White covers visual arts for The Advertiser.