In a parking lot, at night, a car with its window half open is lit from inside. If the car had had the door open, it would have been a different invitation; or if the headlights were on; or if… It might not mean anything when a man gets in the changing room with a pair of jeans; when the girl chooses her seat at the cinema; but… When it comes to personal interactions, or to the social space and the use we make of it, things are not always what they seem. Our surroundings are filled with signs, codes and rumours: some are rooted in local idiosyncrasies, others are learnt –maybe the scene of a movie- and translated to the raw environment at hand; some are born to die, others circulate for a while. And, if they reach a curious ear, they may be the cause of an encounter.
Even though photography keeps a privileged relationship with reality –its unquestionable index quality-, that relationship can only be sustained as long as we talk of reality under the frame of appearances. Everything that is intangible –but real, nonetheless– is immune to the shot of a camera. This is the starting point of all the problematic of photographic depiction, and the History of the medium is made of patches in the manner of solutions. The collective imagery, nowadays dominated by the photographic image, is a swarm of signs, codes and discourses: some are born to die exhausted, others circulate for a while –repeated and recycled– without clearly succeeding in the task of translating our reality. And still, every now and then, we grasp something like an understanding.
Pleased to Meet You is a series of photographs based in the visual possibilities of the medium to depict certain spaces beyond its physical quality. The play with lights and shadows, the dramaturgy opposed to direct depiction, has the intention of pushing representation to a level of unfamiliarity where the imagined possibilities overcome the apparent ones; of transforming the space into a stage where more than one scene could take place. That is why the locations chosen to be photographed have a double use: one visible and another rumoured; or a real use, and another imagined. |
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