CLEMEN

MEMÒRIA PAISATGES INTERIORS · SHEILA PEÑA HERRERO ISABEL CODINA · FOTOGRAFIA ARTÍSTICA 2C

·4· DESCRIPCIÓ DE L’ACTIVITAT

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A partir de la recerca de documentació sobre diferents autors, tant a nivell teòric com d’imatges, es pendran com a referents les declaracions d’intencions d’aquests per a la realització d’un projecte fotogràfic de creació personal.

Es tracta de realitzar una sèrie fotogràfica sobre la idea dels paisatges íntims, entesos com la representació de la identitat personal, la representació de les emocions, sentiments, somnis, malsons... podent fer referència a l’entorn proper, la família, els amics i les inquietuds personals, entre d’altres.

·6· STATEMENT

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El projecte “Clemen” fa una reflexió sobre la família i de com els membres d’aquesta es transmeten entre ells unes maneres de fer, unes costums socials, uns coneixements i en definitiva una cultura amb una combinació de matisos exclusiva de cada una.

D’alguna manera la personalitat de cadascú es forma a la seva infància i generalment aquesta infància es dona en el si de la família. Així doncs, tenim en essència tot allò que hem vist dels nostres pares i avis, com ells ho van tenir dels seus. De manera que tota aquesta herència es transforma en conductes innates.

Prenent la figura de la meva àvia Clemen com a tema, s’ha tractat de retratar el seu dia a dia a través d’una mirada filtrada pels meus propis records d’infància. Una mirada que es centra en moments, costums i coneixements que he heretat d’ella durant la meva vida i que en observar-la reconec com a propis i m’identifico.

Les fotografies s’han fet a l’apartament de la platja on vaig passar gairebé tots els caps de setmana i vacances de la meva infància juntament amb els meus cosins i els meus avis. Es podria considerar aquest, com l’espai amb més càrrega emocional en relació amb la família en general i especialment amb ella.

El projecte es presenta en format llibre, on s’estableix en primer moment una relació entre cada parella d‘matges i la suma d’aquestes donen lloc a una seqüència narrativa.

·8· REFERENTS

·9·NANNA SARHELO

Es pren com a referent el projecte Imagined Landscapes per la poètica del seu treball, l’equilibri dels colors entre les dues o tres fotografies que combina, i el diàleg implícit que s’estableix entre elles, tot que cada fotografia ha estat pressa sense tenir en comte el seu context original.

Son imatges que proporcionen pensaments, històries, símbols i somnis sense cap missatge concret, que pretenen despertar a l’espectador interpretacions personals.

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Imagined Landscapes Imagined landscapes is an on-going project that started while I lived in Barcelona, and traveled in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands. Instead of documenting the city and its events, the photographs became a fragmented map of a mental landscape, related to a time and a place.The work includes space-related images that stem from landscape tradition, but also photographs of people or domestic details, that, in combinations of two or three images, form landscape-like entities.

Each photograph has been taken apart from its original context through the act of combining it with other images. Thus, the photograph is transformed from a straightforward figurative description into something abstract, a part of a fictional narrative. Revolting against the ontologically documentarist nature of photography, these images provide thoughts, stories, emblems and dreams.

As I would never be able to prove with photographs ‘what really happened´, I resigned to make images that do not contain strict messages. Each work is rather formed by a jungle of signs and symbols that aim to awaken personal interpretations. Each combination of two or three photographs functions as a dialogue and the white space between the images of each set creates a blind strip of action, leaving the explanatory link invisible.

·11·RINKO KAWAUCHI

Aquesta artista retrata la vida quotidiana. Pren el que troba al seu voltant, creant a partir de la selecció i la composició una sensació màgica del seu propi entorn. Hi ha llibres en els que presenta imatges juntament amb els seus poemes.

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·13·MARJOLAINE RYLEY

Durant el procés del treball s’ha descobert aquesta artista que treballa sobre idees de la memòria, la història, les relacions familiars i les narratives d’arxiu, amb un fort interès per la família, tant de manera individual com per la seva relació amb la cultura en general.

A la seva obra fa servir la fotografia, el vídeo digital, super8, textos i objectes trobats per explorar temes i assumptes que relacionen les seves experiències personals amb discursos socials i polítics més amplis. Podem dir que l’àmbit de la seva obra se situa entre l’àlbum personal i el document social.

“El treball d’imatge en moviment reuneix relats del passat amb els llocs actuals, fusionant els dos com a prova documental, mentre que les imatges fixes de forma acumulativa narren històries familiars, les relacions, els exilis i els retorns. L’obra es pot llegir com assegut entre realitat i ficció, passat i present, el real i l’imaginari”interpretacions personals.

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‘Villa Mona’

In the set of images entitled ‘Villa Mona’ I photographed my mother’s family’s house on the Belgian coast. My grandmother, my mother and myself have all spent parts of our childhood there.

The collections of objects that can be found in the home can be seen as still life set-ups curated by family members. Objects are placed to act as symbolic reminders of important places, people and events in our lives. These combinations of objects sit within their environments next to other things, wallpaper, furniture, ornaments, thus creating their own miniature narratives.

In opposition to the kind of minimal interiors many people aspire to the objects that clutter the ‘Villa Mona’ are showcased and revered, demonstrating through their stillness and seeming immovability the residues of past lives.

·15·“Such a family home is a specific space which takes little account of any objective decorative requirements, because the primary function of furniture and objects here is to personify human relationships, to fill the space that they share between them, and to be inhabited by a soul. The real dimension they occupy is captive to the moral dimension which it is their job to signify. They have as little autonomy in this space as the various family members enjoy in society. Human beings and objects are indeed bound together in a collusion in which the object takes on a certain density, an emotional value - what we might call a ‘presence ‘. What gives the houses of our childhood such depth and resonance in memory is clearly this complex structure of interiority, and the objects within it serve for us as boundary markers of the symbolic configuration known as home. The caesura between inside and outside, and their formal opposition, which falls under the social sign of property and the psychological sign of the immanence of the family, make this traditional space into a closed transcendence. In their anthropomorphism the objects that furnish it become household gods, spatial incarnations of the emotional bonds and permanence of the family group.” - Jean Baudrillard, ‘The System of Objects’

As a child of divorced parents, nothing about the houses I lived in throughout my childhood was normal. The spaces I grew up in reflected the disintegration of my family unit and even this took a strange route, my parents had separate rooms but lived together in communal houses until I was nine. Born in Thicket Road, a communal squat, my first home was neither conventional nor stable. But a community of people lived there and in this at least, my mother, newly arrived in England from Belgium, had some support. My earliest memories are of our next home, another squat in Laurie Park Road, Sydenham: an enormous, decrepit Victorian villa with weed-ridden gardens, a huge wooden staircase, large rooms and a rambling summerhouse. This environment was nevertheless a happy one for children. Space, expansiveness and community existed here. Children are mercifully spared from the burden of interior decorations aesthetic values, and we were free to enjoy a large yet shabby domain.

Yet these spaces did reflect the values of a generation that rejected their parents’ world: steady jobs, two children and a respectable home were not for them. Years later my mother, now the inhabitant of a housing association property, feels she is paying for that lifestyle choice. The stigma attached to not owning your own home and the lack of choice it affords you is a high price to pay. Her middle class relatives in Belgium are a constant reminder of the choices she made: dropping out of university, getting pregnant and living in communes. Grape picking for money, hitchhiking, giving birth in a squat, all of these exist in stark contrast to the perfectly defined roles expected of a middle class girl living in a perfect interior with furniture. Designated spaces for a designated function. Eating, sleeping, sitting, reading, washing. The formal structure of an interior defines how you behave in a given space.

After our communal living came to an end I lived in a small flat with my mother. This interior ‘failed’ because it had no furniture. Scattered futons, sleeping in the living room, eating on your lap, working from home, broken lamps, peeling wallpaper, piles of clothes and papers: all of these signify a fundamental failure to be decent in society’s eyes. In stark contrast my grandmother’s apartment is structured, functional, disciplined, owned.

Society values objects and wealth as much today as it ever has. The interiors we inhabit and the pride we take in our homes must surely reflect our status in society, define us as successes or as failures. From the awe inspiring glamour of the houses of the aristocracy and the upper classes, to the aspirational interiors of the middle classes with their silverware, crystal and fake antiques, to the bohemian interiors made ‘nice’ by artists and students with decorative flair, and bottom of the pile are people like my mother who during my childhood, was incapable of changing the chaos surrounding us even if she had wanted to. Surroundings are important to the way we see the world, our formative experiences are as much defined by the spaces we inhabit as the people who raise and who care for us.

During the summers of my childhood I spent time at the Villa Mona. This ‘proper’ kind of house on the Belgian coast had an important impact on me. My experience of visiting this house showed me that there was another way to live, a place where a house could contain the dreams, stories and histories of a family. Yet I was also aware that human relations between people in the Villa Mona were different to those in my community at home. Although I experienced my grandmother’s affection, generally relations between adults were distant, uncomfortable. The space made us behave in certain ways and encouraged certain rituals and procedures. I noticed also how space became gendered in the Villa Mona, women cooking in the kitchen, men reading in the salon. The villa could be stern but also, often unexpectedly, laughter, fun, childlike behaviour would emerge; the older inhabitants of the villa were reminded of their own childhoods when they were freer, more joyful and above all grateful to be there in the house by the sea. The villa could be sad and melancholy but also beautiful and wondrous as it revealed how much time had passed in people’s lives. Like little time capsules, stored as if they were to be the prizes of a treasure hunt, exploring the villa could lead one to uncover a reassuring memory or lead to a new and precious experience, soon to join the plethora of other memories.

(Originally published in n.paradoxa issue 13 accompanied with a series of images from ‘Villa Mona’ and ‘Noon’)

·16· DESENVOLUPAMENT DEL TREBALL

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A partir de l’anàlisi dels referents i la reflexió sobre el tema a tractar, es va decidir fer la pressa de les fotografies acompanyant durant un seguit de jornades al personatge a retratar, en aquest cas, “la meva iaia”.

En un primer moment es va intentar fer el retrat al seu pis a l’Hospitalet i la vida diària molt lligada també a la meva mare, però aquest escenari no expresava tot allò que trobava necessari per relacionar el seu dia a dia i la seva manera de fer amb els meus records. De manera que es va decidir canviar aquest escenari per l’apartament de la platja. En aquest espai és on es manifesten més concretament moments que tinc gravats a la meva retina, molt més que no pas el que passa a la ciutat, on es perd aquesta esència.

Les fotografies s’han realitzat amb llum natural, exepte la parella de nit. El material emprat ha estat una càmera réflex digital Canon EOS 550D i dos objectius (Canon 18-55mm i 55-250mm).

La postproducció s’ha basat en la correcció de dominants, la recuperació d’ombres i zones sobreexposades (en el cas dels contrallums) i la correcció de l’enquadrament d’alguna de les imatges.

La manera de presentar el projectes és per parelles d’imatges. Cada imatge es ralaciona amb la seva parella per les tonalitats dels colors i pels moments dels que parlen. En alguns casos la relació entre elles es bastant directa, canviant el punt de vista, o bé apropant-se més en detall. Però a vegades són asociacions entre moments i objectes, o fets que passen paral·lelament, són parelles que deixen mes llibertat al receptor per interpretar i fer analogies.L’ordre en que finalemnt s’endreçen els díptics ens presenta de manera narrativa els moments clau que composen el dia a dia.