“It is a view of the world which denies interconnectedness, continuity, but which confers on each moment the character of a mystery. Any photograph has multiple meanings; indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination.” (Sontag 1978:23)

 

The act of taking photographs is for me a moment of contemplation, a moment where a specific landscape/object/detail calls/catches my attention and I have the desire of keeping it. It is an important and rare moment so I do not take photographs randomly, only in a comfortable position.

 

  According to Susan Sontag (1978:9) “As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.” After having the photographs developed I have the sensation of understanding a little bit better the photographed object, as if in taking that detail through the lens of the camera helps me memorizing the moment; the physicality and concentration involved awakes all my senses.

 

All the photographs presented were taken with an analog camera, a Yashica FX 2000, and during the research for this project I learned how to develop and to scan them. The element of surprise is always present in analog photographs, from the moment of capture to the moment when the film is developed; as in a performance presentation there is an inherent unpredictability. There is a paradox related to the memory and keeping the moment, the use of analog cameras relates to the past, the memory, the physical act of inserting a film, of developing it and the never knowing what will be the result or if there is any result (film is easily destroyed), that is why I have chosen this medium, instead digital photography. In Image Rhetoric Roland Barthes (Barthes 1982:27) draws attention to the ‘real unreality of photograph’, it is not more than an illusion that we were there, a mystery memory that helps to construct our imaginary world.

 

The transformation of the photographs into postcards during the research supported the parallelism between the use of film and the use of traditional mail. When sending a postcard one never knows if it is going to be lost in the mail process. At the same time the act of building a postcard, writing, stamping it, going to the post office, gives you a different physicality in the act of communication, which can be compared to the act of capturing with digital or analog cameras. There is also a different temporality: it is in fact a wish of desacelerating in a high speed century.

 

“Just to show something, anything, in the photographic view is to show that it is hidden.” (Sontag 1978:121)

 

The exhibit photographs are objects and places from Porto, Lisbon, Carriagem, Celorico de Basto, Aveiro, Caldas da Rainha in Portugal and Richmond Park in London England, that caught my attention for their mystery or extreme beauty and that I wished to call attention to.

 

“I wanted to shake something off as though another skin had draped over me.”(Barrett, E. & B. Bolt 2007:38)

 

I started to send my photographs as postcards as an attempt of letting go of my treasures, comfort zones, sharing them with others, family and friends; in the act of sending them another layer of communication has emerged. In the photopostcards image and written text became one, none had more strength than the other, however, the description of the place, would give an extra information to the reader, increasing the power of the image – photograph (Barthes 1982:21).

 

By presenting the photographs with phrases that emerged during the practice of the actions in a sequence I shifted the possible individual significance of the image giving to the ensemble a new meaning and possibility – a travel through fragments which drives one to the whole – a place of comfort.