Alfonso Almendros – Family Reflections
”I do not have any memory of my childhood in which my father would appear. Somehow I always considered his death, when I was two, as a fundamental event in my life. I have always wanted to understand some passages of the past that I never experienced myself. Mostly they are elements that I feel familiar with but at the same time very distant from, like weak shades in my memories and vague episodes of a time that I am not able to remember. In our old family pictures, almost everything seems distant. These images symbolize my memories – unknown and familiar at the same time.
In Family Reflections, I take pictures of myself in places vaguely reminding those that I have seen in our family photographs. At the same time, each of these images defines one basic concept of our ideology – the roots, virility as a symbol of authority, glorification of maternity, obsession with death, or the sacred character of some objects.
Solitude turns into a paradox when it is shared. Words get dissolved – incomplete, fragile… slightly dark, almost invisible. A minuscule thread that links me with my relatives and makes me search for something that could explain why we are so similar in our intimacy.”
More images and other stories on www.alfonsoalmendros.com. Alfonso Almendros was born in 1981 in Petrer, Spain and he lives in Helsinki. He is represented by Invesart Gallery.