“(…) In “O que ficou do que foi” (“What remains of what once was –Cabanas Álbum), the artist invokes memory imprecision through erasing, scratching, and fading away of images belonging to her closest surrounding: family. The photographic processing torn off – accumulating in the bottom of the frame – erases information on spaces, context and characters. Just like we all unwillingly discard our personal history, until what remains is but ashes from times gone by.”
The series “What remains of what was” is composed of sub-series I have called albums, each having its specific characteristics.
I have started the project with “The album Cabanas”, a set of negatives my grandmother gave me. They were typical family photos where people are posing to be portrayed and later remembered. Even though the negatives were not very old and almost all the people portrayed in the photos were actually my relatives, they were also unfamiliar to me, strangers. It was from this fallibility of memory and the inevitability of time that I started relating photography with direct intervention on the image, by erasing parts of it and developing drawings from the scratched parts.
“Álbum desconhecido” was made from negatives bought at the Lisbon flee market, lost photos with images of strangers, people unknown to me.
“Álbum Arquivado (AML)” was developed for the exhibition “Arquivos Secretos” (secret archive) using a photograph from the collection belonging to the Photographic Archive of Lisbon, showing some unknown people, and taken by an unknown photographer.
