My grandfather died when I was 14 years old and all that I
have from him is his old Pentax Spotmatic. I remember that I experienced a lot
of sadness in that time of my life. Nothing attracted me, only the cinema. I
was a member of the Cine-club, where every Saturday I saw new and old movies
that inspired me with the stories and photography that I saw on the big
screen. After I got the camera
back from the cleaning expert, I started to ask myself how to express all those
sensations of suffering; how to
release all those feelings of loneliness that sometimes pursued me in the form
and shapes of images, shadows and lights.
I took some portraits of my closest teenage friends, for them, because
everyone dreamed at that time to be famous.
I met Mercedes thru another friend and when I saw her I had
the feeling that she had come from the past, from the past of photography. I created this portrait of her like an
old one, like a daguerreotype style, I scratched the negative and I printed on
old paper with old fixer to exorcise the idea that she has died and she just
coming back from the dead to be photographed by me.
I didn’t go to the funeral of my grandfather, taking this
photo it was the best way for me to be close to the idea of death in a
photographic sense.
This is the only copy that survives a house fire in
Argentina.
Maria Fernanda
Hubeaut © Text and Photography.
