Resonance (2015-2019)

 

‘How does an empty house, which still vibrates with its last single occupier’s presence, his solitary murmurs forever silenced, resonate. Among these imprinted archives, like leftover furnishings, Krystyna Dul endeavours to bring to light a counter-relief of the tenant’s portrait; one speculates alongside her about his desire to conserve the numerous types of published or printed images, erotic magazines, a bas relief pin-up in carved wood, and more intimate photos.’

Christian Gattinoni

 

According to definition, ‘resonance’ describes  “a quality of sound that stays loud, clear, and deep for a long time”. It also refers to “a quality that makes something personally meaningful or important to someone”. I believe sounds and stories can resonate throughout time, space and matter. It depends only on our mindfulness whether we can capture them.

 

Resonance tells a story of an elderly gentleman, his nostalgia for female bodies that turned into an obsession and in fact the story of his great solitude. I am investigating the origins of his obsession and am re-creating his mental patterns, imagining how his mind was processing

his memories and desires. While presenting traces of his male gaze, I am filtering them through my eyes and my creative practice. 

 

My initial idea was to create a visual documentation of an old house that I had access to. However, with every subsequent photograph I felt

a strongly masculine energy present in this place. Pornography magazines covered with dust, reliefs of nude women and dressed men,

possessing and appropriating young female bodies with gesture or gaze, the collection of old photos depicting female friends, scraps from newspapers presenting women, their bodies imprisoned in frames and photo albums, seized and owned, photographed, multiplied and framed again… In the end, the person, who had done so, became a hero of my cycle, although I did not have a chance to meet him.

 

I wanted to follow the thought and actions of my protagonist. Discovering the recesses of his home, I tried to enter his mind, reconstruct

the associations he had and track the ways of his perception. The raster images borrowed from the porn magazines wrap the reality with a thick net of sexual undertones, they erase our so far perception of this space, and they violate its innocence, its dignified image. Archival photos —

as in a kaleidoscope — flicker with unclear memories. The disrupted ordinariness of the presented interiors evokes anxiety and puts us on alert. Dreams inconspicuously are turning into matter and fragments of sensation are flashing compulsively in memory. The air vibrates with desire.

 

Resonance project was exhibited in the Chapelle de la Charité as part of Les Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles 2019 and supported by Lët’z Arles a.s.b.l. & stART-up de l’Œuvre Nationale de Secours Grande-Duchesse Charlotte. In 2017 I received ‘la Bourse CNA’ – Aide à la création

et diffusion en Photographie for completing this project. In June 2019 the project was published as a photobook by Lët’z Arles a.s.b.l. and Centre national de l’audiovisual in Luxembourg. The Resonance book is available via the CNA website (cna.public.lu).  For the limited edition of the book and prints, please contact me directly.

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Photographs of the exhibition in Chapelle de la Charité by Romain Girtgen.