When we are born ‘each of us is simultaneously the beneficiary of our cultural heritage and the victim of it’[1] from the cities and countries we were brought up in, from our own parents, or guardians. Certain aspects of who we are are built into us; from there we start to mold our personal identities. Things we believe we know about ourselves, our likes and dislikes and things we seek to find out like hobbies and interests. Though we inherit something against our will it doesn’t mean we necessarily understand what it means. Many things filter into our subconscious, forming behavior we cannot always explain. Between memories and moments, the facts and fictions of our past develop and unfold into our futures.
How is it possible to understand a pre-set blue print to our lives if they are locked away and hidden? Most of us do not even consider these blue prints to even exist. Paradoxically the more we search for the answers to questions about ourselves, the more questions we end up finding. Questions after questions about who we are, why we are here and how did we become the people we are today?
The idea I am most interested in is not the life shattering point that we know has had impact but the little moments we experience in life that somehow have greater impact on the people we become. Recounting moments in my past, these vague moments I cannot really recall, I sometimes wonder if they did really happen. Perhaps from being told over again, seeing them in pictures, hearing other people recount them, they have taken on another form. The fragments of truths and imaginary moldings of who we are, who we become. I want to recount these moments.
Moments are physical, whereas memories are visual. A moment is something we feel we cannot change by visual information; it also cannot be remembered after it happens. All moments are easy to forget, as they have no true visual substance; they are emotions that are utterly disjointed to recall. They all filter into our subconscious, forming patterns in our personality and learnt lessons that now become instinctive in our lives. But what are all these moments we save, how have they molded us into people?
Maybe I can find my answer in the cracks of these moments, the place where they form. In their births or their deaths. Suspended between two worlds, finding out something new by photographing it. Photography has been an aid to change the way we see. What can photography tell me about myself, what can the camera see that I cannot? This is what I wish to explore.
[1] Susan Hiller, Susan Hiller : the revenants of time / an essay by Jean Fisher on the artist’s time-based work (London: Matt’s Gallery, 1990), p. 23.
