Using a series of analog photographs titled Atlas Reminiscente, this visual essay aims to highlight the process of landscape reinvention and narrow the dialectical gap between the real and the imagined through the construction of a new reality. The images trace the fluidity of personal and collective histories mediated by family immigration zones and emerge as they take off from spoken narratives. By questioning how spaces preserve and transform the times they house, the creative exercise is driven by the tension between memory and its reinterpretation. It invites reflection on the possibility of capturing a past that continually slips away while embracing its elusiveness through the discovery of the new. The photographs, coupled with audio, intertwine to create new virtual territories where memory is reconfigured through a reappropriation that not only evokes what was but also suggests what could be, revealing the friction between testimony, imagination, and creation.
In the context of a contemporary era that echoes the present, interpolating time and projecting itself onto what has already unfolded, the boundaries of reality are challenged. Through imaginative engagement, landscapes are reshaped, offering new possibilities for understanding the past, the present, and their ongoing interrelationship. The essay presents itself as an exercise that acknowledges the fissures of time and the places lived between generations, not seeking to resolve the distances or fill the voids, but rather to amplify them, transforming them into territories of experimentation.
In my artistic work and research, it has been essential to recognise spaces as potential embodiments of aura, providing a point of contact through the dynamics of distance. This contact with the aura gives rise to a "unique manifestation of a distance, however near it may be" (Benjamin, 1972, p.20), an aspect that only becomes real when there is this distancing. It resembles an inevitable pursuit of something that is no longer there but still calls out and can be heard from where it once was.
The images in this series resonate with memories of past generations, not always establishing a direct link to specific memories, but instead mapping a timeline that spans the spaces that have housed different generations during their successive immigrations. These spaces, in a certain way, also establish a treaty with future generations, including mine and those yet to come. A treaty of resonance, manifested through visual landscapes, which offers new creative spaces.
The visual essay presented here is a selection of images from the "Atlas reminiscente" image series, featuring analogue photographs that serve as reminiscent cartography of spaces that once had a role in family immigration. Through new perspectives, cut-outs and formal dimensions, these images unveil new imaginary spaces for a future that no longer perceives them as they once were. They consider the necessity to cast the shadow of the current moment upon their past existence and subsequently respond to and reinvent the unresolved aspects of the present through spatial symbols.
Rooms, kitchens, houses, land, and countries, all of them witnessed and inhabited, not always by me, but as integral parts of who I am. These spaces have endured the passage of time, and just as they were brought into existence at some point, they continue to evolve, firmly holding those who have traversed them in their grip. Infused with the pervasive essence of time, these spaces become recognisable once more — as they once were and as they have remained — requiring dimensions that challenge conventional concepts of space and time and begin to rescue an inevitable something new.
Over time, symbolic orders are conveyed through images and their compositions, bringing auratic spaces to the surface of consciousness. These images can be understood as products of memory's influence, especially when there is a process of mnemogenesis stemming from the spaces that interact with this series in the process of being born. This represents a stopping point for a future that may provide a glimpse into that initial perception, but which "is not an instrument for exploring the past [but rather] is the means by which we arrive at the lived” (Benjamin, 2013)1. It involves an "always dialectical approximation of the relationship of past things to their place”(Didi-Huberman, 2011, p.147)2, as a foundation for creative process.
The trajectory of these ideas mediating this investigation, seeks to highlight the fissures from which the images arise, the pathways of their genesis. Not only in their visual construction but also in the way they interweave and take form as a whole within this virtual exhibition, I acknowledge that these images cannot be entirely dissociated from the memories heard, the spoken voices, and the detailed descriptions — which in this exercise served as catalysts for the creative process. In attempting to reveal the motivations and reasons behind a creative process, the audios composing this journey of visual conjurations through time and the geographical mark of visual narratives emerge. Curated and gesturally mapped, I seek forms to reconnect these links: to return the voice to the body, the memory to a place, and possibly to reassociate the one who lived it with the one who reimagined it. It is clear that the fragmented speeches, cut from their contexts like fragments of time, no longer offer themselves as they were presented to me in their entirety. This broken and disfigured nature leaves the necessary void for these audios to become available for reattachment to something new, coming into alignment with the reimagined images. These images are then given sound, tone, and a new language, no longer standing alone, but offering new, cohesive perspectives that unfold within the complexity of this creative context.
The course followed by artistic practice is marked by distances and displacements, pursuing a new closeness through an interpretation of the landscape of the new. Even as I recognize the remnants of reality — allowing them to persist in an ironic tone — that can still be felt, like the reflection of an ancient imaginary — I relearn the inevitable pleasure of opening fictional spaces that touch what has already been, yet allow what is no longer to exist. A practical assimilation of living and creating.
Thinking about and reflecting on space — both in its past configuration and its reimagined recreation — can reveal an attempt to hold on to a time, a tiring yet legitimate effort. However, by drawing a parallel between what was real and what is imagined, it becomes clear that, as an artist engaging with real family stories, the sense of self-knowledge through time — acknowledging that spaces retain compressed times and seeking to suspend those times so that there is no need to go back and search for them — shifts away from me. This makes room for the realization that, ultimately, "one only knows a series of fixations in the spaces of the stability of being" (Bachelard, 1979, p. 202), rather than the self itself. It marks the beginning of the journey of mapping spaces, almost unconsciously. The search for similarity between yesterday and today gives way to the desire for dissimilarity, offered by a new perspective on memory. The detachment between what was and what will be is allowed through the experimentation of imagining, photographing, and creating new visual narratives. It is an experience of loss — not only the loss of certainty about who we are but also the loss of certainty about where we come from.
Confronted with reality and guided by access to spoken testimonies, the images in this series come together as tentative images — an attempt to reach landscapes described verbally, an attempt to touch someone else’s memory through my own visual references as they are called upon by the recounted narrative. Even in the presence of their own contradictions, these images unfold within a dialectical visuality. When they coexist with their claims to authenticity and are approached from new perspectives, they become “images of a radical novelty that reinvents the original” (Didi-Huberman, 2011, p.151)3. They expose the frictions between the real— as testimony and landscape — and the imagined — as reappropriation and evocative reconstruction.
When the power of distance opens up space for the influence of gaze and memory to act, these spaces, as objects observed and remembered, draw nearer to us. It feels as though we comprehend them, that they have been unveiled and are now within reach. On the one hand, we have it with us; on the other, it has been "disfigured by its own discovery" (Didi-Huberman, 2011, p. 149)4 and eventually slipped away from our grasp. This loss, realised through the frustrated near-access, instigates a complex exercise between the real and the imaginary.
Considering the mediation of these remembered landscapes as a quest for new sediment signifies a departure from a memory that does not capture a concrete duration. Instead, it reactivates abolished periods, abstractly positioning them on a timeline devoid of spatial density (Bachelard, 1969). The narratives that were recounted to me play out like memories that I haven’t personally experienced. Yet, I reminisce about them through imagery. In their entirety and through visual compositions, these narratives configure new spaces that haven't been seen before. There is a fictional exploration that appropriates memories, weaving them into its own narrative. In this context, it carries a certain sense of legitimacy, as I see the spaces I occupy and create as a return to those previously inhabited by earlier generations.
A cycle of interactions, experiences and reflections emerges from the dynamic handled by the perception of auratic spaces, giving rise to new imaginary spaces that may originate from there. The presence of the imaginary in the creative process ensures a series of returns that correspond to, challenge, and provide reassurance, as "all memory has to be reimagined ..., [after all] we have in our memories micro-films that can only be read if they are lighted by the bright light of the imagination" (Bachelard, 1969, p.175).
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Bachelard, Gaston. (1969). The poetics of space. Beacon Press.
Benjamin, Walter. (1972) “A Short History of Photography”. Screen, 13(1), 5-26.
https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/13.1.5
Benjamin, Walter. (2013). Imagens de pensamento. Editora Autêntica.
Didi-Huberman, Georges. (2011). O que nós vemos, o que nos olha. Dafne Editora.
Didi-Huberman, Georges. (2020). Imagens apesar de tudo. Editora 34.