I Remember You Well – Engrams
I Remember You Well – Engrammi
«It is right in this space between absence and mourning, that portaiture’s motionless interval unfolds» (Jean-Christophe Bailly, L’apostrophe muette: Essai sur les portraits du Fayoum, Hazan, Paris 1997, my translation).
«È in questo spazio fra assenza e lutto che viene ad aprirsi l’immobile intermezzo del ritratto» (Jean-Christophe Bailly, L’apostrofe muta. Saggio sui ritratti del Fayyum, Quodlibet, Macerata 1998).
Part of the project «I Remember You Well».
An engram is a concept of neuropsychology, mostly used in philosphical terms, which refers to a hypothetical way in which memory traces are stored in the brain — in the form of chemical or physical changes, mainly determined by emotional response to stimuli.
Photographic portraiture is a mean to preserve memories, in particular those of the ones we love. Photographs themselves become objects of affection, since they’re the vehicle by which an emotional charge is kept alive and can be reproposed.
The disgregating close-ups of «Engrams» are obtained by using a scanning software on underexposed negatives, that have a lack of information for which the software creatively tries to compensate, and then by digitally postproducing the resulting images.
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