What is happening
by Ewa Pajewska

University of Arts, Poznan, Poland
Graduation year: 2022

portfolio special mention call 'BLURRING THE LINES 2022', 2022

My work "What is happening" is a reflection on how a detail of a photograph, a moment, creates possible interpretations and narrative paths. One moment of registration, a gesture, a facial expression, determines the alleged stories, which left in family albums will influence the paths of interpretation and become a carrier of memory for the next generations. My family album was a direct inspiration for my project. When I look at my family photos yet they start to create doubts in my head. I am entangled in narrative riddles. I am aware of the impossibility of getting to "what was then". In my project, I follow this sense of losing the ability to read one story and the truth about the family from family archives. I involve my immediate family in my project - my son and husband. Being at the same time a family member and an intruder - director, I enter an intimate world with a camera. An intimate "spectacle" takes place every day in the space of the house. I create photographs that refer to family photos, but through the created randomness I open them to different paths of interpretation. They become a combination of truth and fiction. What is intended and played is combined with our emotions that arise when photographing certain scenes. The line between what is created, what is happening, and what could potentially happen is blurring. I am trying to reveal the deceptive nature of "created fragments" of family life. In some frames, I include a life-size, physically printed elements of photographs from my family album from childhood. The project also become a hybrid of two realities.


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