Home is where the self is… Magnified, multiplied and dissolved

As we were reaching the third decade of the 21st century, the impossibility to get out of the house, sometimes enforced by the police and the army, radically changed, for billions of people and almost overnight, the value of spaces and modes of being we used to take for granted.

On the big chessboard of meaning, all pieces are connected, and policy changes sent shockwaves at an intensely personal and human level. For a moment that felt indefinite, the World outside was no longer a place where you were allowed to feel at home; it was now both a hostile hot zone and a Lost Paradise, whose mythical, sensual memory was revived through the cold proxy of windows and the newfound dominion of houseplants.

No matter how big the windows were, the walls between them grew thicker, more menacing with time, backing the Self into a corner. For millions, the crisis outside sparked an intense moment of exploration inside, the familiar home an increasingly exotic and complex territory.

And indeed in the present case, the camera—with its ability to expose film more than once—became a flickering searchlight, probing the Self, its complex relationship to the environment (both serendipitous and essential), and the endless reinvention of its identity, sometimes on the verge of dissolution.

2020-015 Aug 2020 - Self - Double Exposure - Kentmere 400 at 800 (twice at 1600) in Olympus XA3 camera with 35mm lens dev as iso800 HC-110 (B) 19°C 11min (60s then 4x per min for 10min)
Back to lockdown mode. (Scan from 35mm film.)
Waiting. (Scan from 35mm film.)
Looking for more windows to open. (Scan from 35mm film.)
Metamorphosis I. (Scan from 35mm film.)
Metamorphosis II. (Scan from 35mm film.)
See right through me. (Scan from 35mm film.)
Dissolve, rinse, dry, repeat. (Scan from 35mm film.)
Window to my soul. (Scan from 35mm film.)