Photo making-of

photo by Bruno Houdayer Artist/Photographer

Concept

As part of the global clan, we, the women, the human beings in this part of the world, are undergoing this drastic change, sloughing the negatives and regaining our image. We struggled trying to emerge from the shadow in which we were imprisoned for decades either by our own (negatives) or by the indifference and ignorance of the world..

In the world’s conscience we remained indifferently invisible and when accidentally subjected to the media’s light we were outlined as (the passive veiled/ negatives without prints). Nevertheless, we were there, all along, actively creating, struggling, weaving our lives, striving and existing in every productive field, a world without the right lightening, without a reading eye.

Nowadays, we reached a point in our history, where all is changed, the winds of global unbalance and the media revolution reviving the embers of our efforts, we rode the tide casting away the darkness overshadowing our identities.

I, hereby, put my life under a microscope, and allow you see things that exist beneath the surfaces .

I see us out, shedding this cocoon of negatives, coming under full light, for us to see us, and for you to recognize us as part of the human body.

What we see is not it all, if we can’t see it that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exisit. What we see is part of an ocean heaving under the surface.

Technique

The work consists of 6 formations as follows:

A: the major work :

Formation(1) : 320 x 205 cm. Strips of photo-negatives, 132 film rolls of 4752 pictures, attached by hand sewing. It covers 20 years of the artist and her sister’s life from 1985-2005. A life shadowed, illuminated here and there with rays of light symbolizing the artist’s struggle to bring that life to light, to print, by means of creativity. This negative tableau appears just emerging from the black veil cloth (formation 2) .

Formation 2: A black veil cloth 300 by 200 cm. Slipping away haphazardly, showing two slits for the absent eyes or hands. .

B: images:

Formation 3:aDVD image of formation 1#2, but with a black shadow of the artist standing in behind.(cast on the ceiling,at the upper edge of formation 1#2)

Formation4: a DVD image, showing the artist body floating, wrapped in transparent placenta , trying to imerge from the image of formation 3.

Formation 5:aDVD image,showing the artist face with a reflection,both still wrapped in transparent cocooning white.but the hands just emerging from the placenta.

Formation 6: a DVD imag, showing the two sisters’ faces revealed smiling and uncovered. A print at last.

( each image would be cast at the upper edge of the other to form a circle ,a continuity.)