Description
After a number of tragic events in my life in recent years (the serious illness of a close friend and the loss of two others), I began to feel that life wasn’t what it used to be. These events have changed something in me and in the way I see those around me. I felt an urgent need to reconnect with my old self. So I went into the dusty attic of my memory in search of traces of my past and of those who are no longer with us. During this painful journey, I was confronted with serious questions such as: “Do I really know myself? Who is it that makes me who I think I am? What defines a self? How can we capture this, and in what form? Why does memory irrevocably disappear into a thickening fog? This series of images attempts to capture the flow of time and the erosion it leaves on our souls, as if taken from inside the darkroom of memory. The lack of sharpness of these images, their eroded textures and dark themes show the incessant erasure that the surface of our memories undergoes. As these images are not about the real world, but rather about the inner images kept in the attic of memory, I experiment with different ways of shooting, sometimes using up to 3 cameras (analog and digital) to take a single image. Likewise, I try to show these images using different media, as they are not meant to be seen in the usual way of looking at photos. For example, I use a viewmaster to visualize some of these images, to give the impression that we are looking at them with our “mind’s eye”.
Biography
Photographer and visual artist Saïd Hammouch lives and works in Brussels. His approach is to use the photographic medium to experiment with its possibilities, creating new visual experiences. A graduate of the Académie de Saint-Gilles and the Ecole des Arts d’Ixelles, he is interested in purely visual rendering, where graphic composition takes precedence over the object represented. Above all, he strives to distance himself from the realistic documentation characteristic of photo-reportage, and to bring out the aesthetic and universal potential of a moment or a feeling. As well as celebrating the graphic aspect of photographed subjects, light and shadow, his work also focuses on the formalist aspect of human presence. In this way, he sets out to produce images that attempt to find beauty in environments where chaos reigns, or other images that explore themes that are difficult to approach, such as the notion of the individual.
Works
