Eidola

The photographic project “Eidola” explores the concept of the image in photography using methods of image reconstruction and appropriation.

The influences for the inspiration of this idea came from the book “La Chambre Claire” by philosopher and art critic Roland Barthes and from postmodernist theorist Jean Baudrillard. According to Barthes, the image in photography develops an inseparable connection with death. And because the photographic capture, by definition, declares that what it encloses “has existed” (ça-a-été), it transforms the living subject into a static image, into a “living image of a dead object”. However, according to Jean Baudrillard’s theory, images in the contemporary world no longer reflect reality but act as idols that replace the originals.

As I am influenced by the theories of philosophers, I draw from my collection original and archival photographic material in order to study the asynchronous trajectory of temporal oscillations that govern the form of an image in photography. I also examine its availability to death, as well as its rebirth following any subsequent visual intervention.

Through the process of transforming faces and stories, I discover how my connectivity is nourished both by the narratives and by the memories I held about the photographs. Gradually, during this transition, the original experience fades to make way for a new version of things that gives rise to “its own idol”. The mortality of the previous transforms into the eternity of what comes next.

The project “Eidola” invites the viewer to perceive the human presence beyond the mental boundaries of existence, as it reflects a “post-mortem experience” of its idol. Whether as a flash of light or as a metaphysical, transcendent form, it “haunts” the photograph, imposes itself and inhabiting it.