Since it’s invention, photography, like any other form of art, sculpture, even architecture, express, explore and question ideas about relationships to a place or time that has significance to us.
There are many ways of depicting such relationships in a photography- from a single shot that can stand on its own yet suggesting a narrative that extends beyond the frame to a sequence of photographs that suggests a deeper psychological narrative.
Inspired by the topic “Constructing Narratives and Challenging Histories”, I would like to show an example of a narrative that I am working on currently, based on pictures, taken by myself back in 2015.
Having been living abroad for 20 years, I still cope with the feeling of guilt because of leaving my country, the feeling of missing my family and the feeling of detachment from my background and the feeling of lost moments. To overcome these feelings and accept them, I started to photograph all what was around me, when visiting Ukraine.
One of the photographs is a self portrait and suggests my inner state, a feeling, where I am facing the origin of my identity and reflecting upon the importance of the connection to own community and roots.
The second one is a representation of the community, a place and time to which I am seeking to connect. It’s an amusement park, to which I often came with my family. as a kid. That image is a representation of my childhood, my past, yet, it’s a timeless moment, to which we always want to come back.
By putting together these two images, I seek to construct a narrative, through which I explore and come closer to the distant surroundings and distant time, which sometimes, I feel lost for me because I am not there any longer physically.
I have taken the photographs back in 2015, but I back then I didn't have a clear understanding of meaning of these images. Not until I have taken the course in Seeing Through Photographs.
Only after learning how we understand the depth of our lives through the lens of photography, I know, these images are not only about the final pictures. I use the camera to create a connection to a place, which has significance to me.
