Memoria
'Memoria' was born as an attempt to photographically materialize memory.
Working on my own family pictures, the series is a re-exposure, re-framing and re-lightening of those old pictures, a reinterpretation meant to turn them into actual memories.
The use of colour and distortion is a try to imitate the ways of our own memory, which every time that we remember, forgets and memorizes again, storing not data, but feelings and associations made at that moment.
The double Polaroid allows the association and the instantaneity of the format suggests the continuity of the memory process that leads to deterioration, to oblivion.
Using chemical techniques I tried to underline the subjectivity and randomness of the whole process. The Polaroid picture is turned into a tangible object made out of an intangible memory, something irreproducible, a fetish. A marker of a moment and a place that symbolizes our wish to retain our experiences.
At a non-photographic level, the series was thought to be showed with a fragrance, such as coffee, suntan oil, pop corn, baby powder, cotton candy, etc. selected for each picture and placed next to it. This idea was meant to take advantage of the so-called Proust effect, the high influence of smells as activators of memories, to increase the reaching of the viewer and his/her reaction towards the pictures.
