Dones a l'espigó Painting

In recent years I wanted to approach memory by contemplating the family album in my work. The private and anonymous family photographs have served me to reflect on the power of evocation of the printed image in the one who contemplates it. My reflection comes close to what Marianne Hirsch called Postmemoria when I reinterpret the scenes of private life that appear in the old photographs bought in markets and antiquarians and of which I do not know their real history. These scenes of private life speak of past and family, of what we have in common and moves us all. In my paintings, I intend to capture the instant in which the photos carry us to the past, when after seeing them we closed our eyes, preserving in the retina the image with the already diluted forms and the colors synthesized. That flash produced by the brain that will accompany us forever. The essence of an unexperienced moment that we have made ours. My reflection also addresses the history and current moment of private photography. Documentary value has long been given to journalistic and professional photography, but the photos that families cherish in their homes eventually disappear when families disappear. I think it is precisely these photos, with their spontaneous frames, with their failures of exposure and revelation... those that have the power to transport us to our most intimate and personal past. Fortunately, many archivists have begun to rescue these images to catalog and give them the place they deserve in our history. I am also creating my own private collection of acquired photos. The printed photos are not just an instant captured, they are real objects that, with luck, bring clues that bring us closer to their moment of creation. I look for those clues in the photos of strangers that I acquire because they allow me to get a little closer to the real story; Type of paper, signs of deterioration, framing, lighting, elements of the landscape or objects that appear, signature, inscriptions on the back... Although I am not always lucky to find them, if it is the case I try to respect those referring to the real story and the decisions made by those who took that picture when inventing my story. The fact of looking back from the domestic sphere allows to show a part of the unknown history outside the family itself. This part of the story explains the role women have played in building our present society from anonymity.