This series explores several thematic elements that can be found in the works of some of my artistic inspirations including: Salvador Dali, Chris Marker, Terrence Malick, Jean-Luc Godard, and Michel De Montaigne. Photographed against a colorful glass-wall that changes hue was done with all ambient light. A conscious choice was made to have the model wear black and white in order to separate her from the background. Bright expressionistic colors were chosen as a citation of the 1960s, when saturated hues where omnipotent in all facets of the arts and culture.
“Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments; it is only later that they show themselves to us, on account of their scars,†a line that echoes forth from Chris Markers black and white 1962 film, “La Jetée.†Chris Marker spent his life studying memory and how we as humans: record it, remember it, distort it, recreate it, and how we deal with the idea of what the world will make of us when we have become its pass. Similar to “La Jetée,†I set my series of photographs in an airport, the Miami International Airport to be precise. This is the stage where a beautiful woman walks and poses against a colorful glass-wall, she is at once a memory in her own right, proof of a photo shoot, and a recreation/distortion of a “scar†that someone has left on me. This muse is the key to going back in time, she is a portal, much like the madeleine was to Marcel Proust, she jump starts my brain and comes calling: a sea of emotions, of images, of smells, of moments that have long since passed. She represents everything beautiful and mysterious about life, a woman that I barely recognize and understand, which is why the photograph from behind speaks volumes. Much like the opening scene in Godard’s, “Vivre Sa Vie,†where Anna Karina is shot from behind, it’s out of respect and love, a technique that even Dali applies in several of his paintings, perhaps most notably in his “Girl with Curlsâ€, as much as you cherish and love this woman you realize that you don’t know her, she is still a far off land beckoning you to her shores. The universal tragedy of this is that you will never get to know her, because life is barely long enough to truly understand one’s self, Montaigne writes, “Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.†The colors from this series are bright and expressionistic, and why not? As the Cahiers critics and nouvelle vague filmmakers believed, what makes an auteur is not his subject matter or what he chooses to say, but instead in the techniques he employs expressing everything on the screen. As Jean-Paul Sartre said, “One isn’t a writer for having chosen to say certain things, but for having chosen to say them in a certain way.†I admire the 1960s and especially the color films of Godard, mainly: “Pierrot le Fou,†“Made in U.S.A.,†and Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Red Desert.†I am still young and have much to learn, but as of now, what I try to re-invent in my work is an amalgamation of everything I have seen and read. This homage is to the women in our lives and to the light that allows us to see all that is.