Petra Feriancová

Now I can remember I was actually there, but I kept my eyes closed at the time (7. - 9. August 2011)

2011

  • Petra Feriancová, Now I can remember I was actually there, but I kept my eyes closed at the time (7. - 9. August 2011), 2011, (1/6)

    B&W photography

    framed 111 x 158 x 4 cm

  • Petra Feriancová, Now I can remember I was actually there, but I kept my eyes closed at the time (7. - 9. August 2011), 2011, (2/6)

    B&W photography

    framed 41,5 x 54,5 x 3,5 cm

  • Petra Feriancová, Now I can remember I was actually there, but I kept my eyes closed at the time (7. - 9. August 2011), 2011, (3/6)

    B&W photography

    framed 111 x 158 x 4 cm

  • Petra Feriancová, Now I can remember I was actually there, but I kept my eyes closed at the time (7. - 9. August 2011), 2011, (4/6)

    B&W photography

    framed 55,2 x 78,3 x 3,5 cm

  • Petra Feriancová, Now I can remember I was actually there, but I kept my eyes closed at the time (7. - 9. August 2011), 2011, (5/6)

    B&W photography

    framed 41,5 x 108 x 3,5 cm

  • Petra Feriancová, Now I can remember I was actually there, but I kept my eyes closed at the time (7. - 9. August 2011), 2011, (6/6)

    B&W photography

    framed 42 x 70 x 3,5 cm

The title 'Now I can remember I was actually there, but I kept my eyes closed at the time (7.–9. August 2011)' reads like a personal statement. Without the photographic image the memory would have faded. Only the photography triggers the memory to the situation, which has passed. The photography does not convey what someone might have seen with the own eys. It shows a different image, the frozen moment in a very specific view, as if the own eyes were closed.

The title suggests that it is only when we look at a photograph or image that our memory is switched on. Oh yes! Now we recall that situation, that landscape, that light! Often we need pictures to trigger the images stored in our memories and bring them to conscious recollection. This is where archives and documents play an important role. The flood of images in the media and the digital memories in our hard-drives take over our brain’s capacity for visual memory. The digitally archived pictures of our lives replace our memories.

Enforcing the memory, that might be one of the functions of art – to remind us of the intellectual probing, the atmosphere, the search for cultural expression which were peculiar to a particular situation, a certain political and social era. And it also reminds us of what creativity can achieve.

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