Momentáneamente Para Siempre
Momentáneamente Para Siempre is a project that collects family stories, born as a response to the urge to answer some of the questions that came along with me after my father passed away.
How does photography function - or not - as a catalyst for remembrances? How can the medium of photography challenge and represent the tangibility of memories?
The work is designed and shaped as of today in three chapters, The Box of Memories, Cris y Gus and The New Endless Life of a Tree, aiming to reflect on the role played by family photographs especially when they appear to constitute the only access to deal with distance, absence or loss.
It aims to convey how photographs can become sometimes the only tool to better understand and deal with the meaning of remembering and what is after for those left behind, by reshaping and negotiating familial remembrances and identities.
The whole project observes the relationship between memories and photographs and focuses on how to put in conversation the role of photography with the reliability and the tangibility of personal remembrances; both, as a tangible translation of individuals’ mind projections, as well as, and at times on the contrary, as a framed limitation to depict the entire substance of a remembrance.
Momentáneamente Para Siempre is the result of my research studies on the role and meaning of photographs as transitional objects and visual spaces of memory, which at times succeed and at times fail, to assert themselves as immutable substitutes for loved ones who are far or gone and as representations of eternity and immortality.
How does photography function - or not - as a catalyst for remembrances? How can the medium of photography challenge and represent the tangibility of memories?
The work is designed and shaped as of today in three chapters, The Box of Memories, Cris y Gus and The New Endless Life of a Tree, aiming to reflect on the role played by family photographs especially when they appear to constitute the only access to deal with distance, absence or loss.
It aims to convey how photographs can become sometimes the only tool to better understand and deal with the meaning of remembering and what is after for those left behind, by reshaping and negotiating familial remembrances and identities.
The whole project observes the relationship between memories and photographs and focuses on how to put in conversation the role of photography with the reliability and the tangibility of personal remembrances; both, as a tangible translation of individuals’ mind projections, as well as, and at times on the contrary, as a framed limitation to depict the entire substance of a remembrance.
Momentáneamente Para Siempre is the result of my research studies on the role and meaning of photographs as transitional objects and visual spaces of memory, which at times succeed and at times fail, to assert themselves as immutable substitutes for loved ones who are far or gone and as representations of eternity and immortality.
Chapter 1
THE BOX OF MEMORIES
As a geographical exploration of the space and the object into the space, this opening chapter is the visual result of an experiential performative research, depicting the relationship between me and the content of the family box of memories.
Sometimes playful, sometimes thoughtful, at times detached, at times closer, the entire chapter is exploring the concept of a box, which from being just an object becomes a place.
This series of self-portraits it’s been the visual representation to questions like:
How do I position myself in relation to the work itself? How many different points of view can be there for reading someone else stories comprehensively?
Dealing with the archival material contained in the box, meant for me the flexibility to constantly position myself in questioning, experimenting, attempting, failing and succeeding, often one as a consequence of the other one.
For this reason, here I deliberately wanted to preserve and include drafts of initial visual attempts as a representation of my inner process too. These sketches of drawings, in this specific case became thus final results and part of the main work.
For this reason, here I deliberately wanted to preserve and include drafts of initial visual attempts as a representation of my inner process too. These sketches of drawings, in this specific case became thus final results and part of the main work.
Memories are reconstructive, not reproductive.
As for our effort and attempt to keep recalling and reprojecting memories in our minds as much as possible accurate, they will be every time even slightly, different, reconstructived, reshaped and redefined.
Memories become thus each time, a familiar but a new encounter.
As for our effort and attempt to keep recalling and reprojecting memories in our minds as much as possible accurate, they will be every time even slightly, different, reconstructived, reshaped and redefined.
Memories become thus each time, a familiar but a new encounter.
Selecting, folding and reshaping, became here an act to intervene, relate, and reconstruct.
Applying the tequnique of Origami, here some printed family album photographs are presented as small boxes reframing memories of daily life stories.
