Evidence of memory or oblivion?

How can an “evidence of memory” end up in a garbage bin like the picture above? Or next to it? When does a photograph stops being the proof that something happened and ends up being an annoying piece of paper with a picture on it? What is that which drives people to give up their whole family, inside of half torn-down houses, hanging from frames on the walls, for over decades?

You stir up their peace, if you remove them, you perform a sacrilegious act or do you give credit to all who lived there by giving them a second interpretation in another space-time?

One thing is sure, photography doesn’t give answers, it does create questions though, even if they can’t be answered.

Every time I make my bed, my feet stumble on things I have hidden underneath it. It’s a way of reminding me of their existence. 4 picture frames covered in a white sheet.

But how did they get there?

It was last March 2019. Day 19 of a year where the word normality was just part of our every day. I intrude with the anxiety of a thief, into a half torn-down two storey house in the village Kastraki which is near Kalambaka, surrounded by the Meteora mountains.

The floor is dodgy. I could see the basement through its holes. The neighbor looks at me suspiciously, like the faces in those forgotten frames hanging on the walls. I was taking pictures of the room knowing that every little thing in here has a whole life hiding behind it. Various thoughts spin inside my head while I’m looking at the pictures around the room. We demand something from them, we want them to stir our souls, we want them to take us somewhere else far away, we want them to project on us. For the first time, I wonder, what do these pictures want from us? What did they really want? What do they want now?

I took the pictures down violently, half of the plaster came down with the nail they were hanging on, as if they stubbornly denied to leave from there.

Five or maybe six people, framed, and covered in a white sheet. Forgotten. What might their story be?

I wonder if they were “forgotten” on these walls on purpose? They stopped being evidence, they became a decaying and forgotten object. I wonder if it was an act of punishment, an indirect way to curse on the people represented as if by leaving them somewhere forgotten you can erase faces from your memory. Hide them somewhere deep inside your subconscious.

Is the picture hanging on a wall a certificate of presence or absence ? Evidence of memory or oblivion? A printed photograph and not the hundreds of pixels we have stored on our computers like a trash picker, isn’t just a photograph. It’s something much bigger for each and every one of us and according to our experiences and stimulations we re-adapt and re-shape it into something personal.

A photograph can become an undiscovered area of semantic elements that have to do with chemical spoiling, printing techniques of another era, historical elements. It can also turn into a piece of evidence, certificate or even an ornament.

Words fail. That’s why a picture is so powerful. The more silent it is, the more powerful it becomes.

The agonizing question still remains. Time will give the answers to what is hiding behind the unknown motivation of the active present. Time will show if the specific act gave some kind of fictional immortality like the one we experience by taking photos avidly while the only thing we want to state is that, I’m here, I exist. Is, after all, photography an existential question or just a manner of light?