Absences
Absence does not imply emptiness but rather a latent presence,
suggested through signs and traces left by those who are no longer there.
When an image contains spaces devoid of living beings but where objects,
signs or configurations that evoke an experience remain,
the result is often a contemplative and deeply emotional experience.
Roland Barthes defines photography as "....a micro-experience of death....."
capable of making the absence of who has been and what has happened perceptible.
Photography becomes a bridge between the observer's present and the past
of an action now concluded.
Images devoid of living beings but rich in traces question the viewer.
A moved chair, an unmade bed, a half-open door, and a building dotted with closed or illuminated windows speak of who is not / could be there, leaving room for the imagination.
Absence then becomes a narrative theme.
"There are silences that say everything....." writes Marguerite Duras.
Photography that shows an absence is a silence that tells.
This silent narration finds particular expression in urban night photography,
where the quiet and artificial light amplifies the absence.
Photographing deserted spaces outside the spectacular context restores authenticity to places, allowing the traces to reveal the hidden stories of a presence and absence in an eternal alternation.
In this sense, absence is not a negation but a form of presence negotiation.
It evokes not what is but what has been or could be.
The photographer becomes an archaeologist of the contemporary, capable of capturing fragments that speak more of absences than presences.
This game of references makes such visual experiences so stimulating and fascinating,
capable of restoring the memory of the spaces and lives that have passed through them.
For Paul Auster, "....Things that disappear never disappear entirely.
They always remain, like a part of life that we cannot see....".
The photography of absence captures what we cannot see but continues to exist in the shadows,
in the details, in the traces left behind and to come.