Pending Memories

The departure point of inspiration for this project are the Parrandas de Remedios festivities in Cuba, in the town of Remedios. I visited this town for a couple of years and was impressed by the theatricality and intensity of the festivities. One of the major attractions here is a cathedral-like façade, built only for the support of light works and visual paraphernalia which becomes an important symbol for the visitors and inhabitants of the town. The façade is supported by a massive structure that makes possible to sustain the large size of stage. Inspired by these events, I initially intended to document these massive structures. The problem with such a procedure is that these festivities only happen once a year, giving me very little room to work. This situation led me to consider the possibility of virtually creating my own structures, based on existing drawings and designs and then place them in other spaces. I worked with an engineer, an architect and a designer with whom I worked closely to achieve photographic realism, approaching the making of these photographs with the depths of a construction project, including details about structure and the physical properties of different elements. Once I get all this information is when I personally work on the post-production: the black and white tones conversion, image texture, luminosity, contrast, lens effect. This workflow explodes the traditional understanding of documentary photography and photography itself as a medium bound necessarily to reality, challenging the spectator instead with an ambiguous image. The proposal of the shape in the photographs is based on sketches that I make with a group of images and references in my mind. Impossible to separate, they are all different and one at the same time. The final shape has a subtle mix of industrial complexes, combined with a puzzle-like form, weaponry, banners, cityscape. At the end, they achieve a new form that leaves the spectator constantly questioning what it is. The decision of 'photographing' them from the rear gives no apparent solution, leaving room for many possible readings. From a conceptual point of view, I believe this work connects with my perception of the Cuban reality and the crisis this country has lived for such long time. The accumulation of these images projects a reality made-up of structures in disuse, left by the idleness of a depleted territory. The constructions function as metaphors for the inert remains of a society sustained by the spectral foundation of memory. The residues of an epic past which now appears as ruins of the fiction that we still have to live today.