Photography

Existence of My Photo Archive

Ella Theunissen
Practice Autonomous Practices
Project Critical Studies
Major Photography
Year Graduation year

Bestaansrecht van mijn fotoarchief

Bestaansrecht van mijn fotoarchief (Existence of my photo archive) brings the past, present and future together by manifesting it in a daguerreotype. An object that does not only shows my history but also the present. I am doing that by using a silver plate that reflects the viewer. This creates an interaction between the person who looks at it and my photo archive.

The object has been created from an obsession with my past that I am projecting at the future, whereby I am losing sight of the present. I am feeling an urge to maintain my photo archive, despite that I am not perceiving it anymore.
So one could suppose that I would be cherishing something that has seized to exist because of the fact that you cannot contain it anymore, due to the endless quantity. The 450.154 stapled blank photo sheets, that relate to the joint projection of my pictures on the daguerreotype, make my photo archive tangible.
The work is questioning contradictions by opposing them and at the same time, by bringing them closer to each other: visibility and invisibility, remembering and forgetting, past and present.