Ménagerie [2005–2019]
“I hope that your documentary is fiction.” Jean-Luc Godard
Without the aid of captions and conventions, the narrative potential in photography is significantly limited. It could be said that the narrative prevails only momentarily, in establishing relations between photographs that have certain managerial characteristics.
These photographs were taken in environments I know well and are a kind of distorted photo-journal, which implies writing about close people, places, and events with the intention of fictionalising reality. The title Ménagerie (bestiary) which functions as an introduction to the narrative was used in its symbolic, colloquial meaning denoting a group of people – in this case, a family. Thus the photographs, which mostly portray various objects, situations, and places, revolve around a group of individuals, who nevertheless remain almost invisible. At once both similar and different, these images, created over a period of more than ten years, function per se as paragraphs or chapters.
Unmistakably escapist and formalistic, this project, with its unorthodox fictional mode and personal trajectory, may be understood to indicate the need for a life outside of the highly problematic time and place in which it was created: The need for an unbiased society. [MV]
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