SaraAnnotation
what?
how?
why?
choices?
what came before?
what will follow?
3 questions from the question generator
[claudio's not-so-edited notes]
what-how-why-choices?
I made this project for Cihad's seminar on power and violence. I was inspired by the talks we had during the seminar, and draw a connection between colonialism and totalitarianism. Both try to impose ideology over people, taking away their individual identity and forcing them to just one way of being, of behaving, of thinking. They don't allow alternatives, difference. They make everyone similar. And they make people afraid of being different. Fear is one of their main tools. I then wanted to show through my work what it is to make everyone lookalike, without identity.
When the mist came to Rotterdam I thought it was the best setting for the idea I had in mind. The mist makes everyone similar and not recognizable, takes away identity, makes the human figure lost in the background without any possibility to choose and stand out, just as totalitarianism does. I then just took my camera and walked around with this intention in mind.
what came before? what will follow?
I mostly shot staged photography but I've always been in love with documentary photography - just go out in the streets and shoot without much thinking or preparation. That's what I did in this project and it made me feel so good and in love again with photography after months that I did not even touch my camera. So, I would love to shoot more this way. Concerning the project I would like to expand it further, working on the same concepts of shadows, fear, loss of identity but maybe using other metaphors than the mist