Statement
Diego Ballestrasse researches the imaginary potential that contains the photographic medium, his work raises a reflection around the multiple temporalities that each image carries, as well as the mechanisms which activate memory and the inherent subjectivity in our perception of images.
After two decades away from his home country, the photographs from his family archive have taken on a singular role in his artistic practice; they have become in themselves a sort of optical instrument. Observing what can be seen 'through' photographs and film stills, allows him to unravel latent dimensions of his family's past, that which remained buried beneath the traces.
In his latest projects he explores the physical dimension and the materiality of the photographic object. The images function as a mediating space in which the margins of ‘the photographic’ expand, approaching the moment of the shot as an open space and not so much as a closed and consummated fact. From this perspective, his work invites us to expand the way in which we relate to images and to adopt a more participatory and active role to discover other paths to which photographs can lead us.
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“[…]Another method of unveiling what is hidden is to approach the very core of photography, its materiality. Diego Ballestrasse's own family archive takes him on a journey back in time. By interpreting and analysing the family's documentation - immortalized for the future - he questions the depictions that have over the years become his own constructed memories.”
Jenny Lindhe, text from the exhibition
Parallel Intersection: Under (De)construction.
Landskrona Foto(SE)
Parallel Intersection: Under (De)construction.
Landskrona Foto(SE)