Looking at a photograph consists, first of all, in identifying, on a physical medium, forms and signs. However, these elements take on a meaning only when we link them to a context, when we connect them to our own experiences. We interpret this visual language according to our emotions, our culture, our memory.

What can you see? What does it represent? Which meaning does it have for you?

I asked these questions to different people while showing them photographs of various kinds. I recorded their answers, in their native language, and then wrote down the correspondent text.

“Transcriptions” is organized in chapters, each corresponding to one of these photographs.

On-going project

1. A young woman in a wedding dress, her interlaced hands in her lap, on a chair, in front of a brick wall which belongs to a house. The colours are rather dull, grey concrete on the floor, and then these slightly cheap, yellowish bricks behind her, and concrete window ledges, grey again, and the white window frames and the white dress.And the dress is so bulky that one can see only the rear leg of the chair. She has her hair pinned up with a headband with little pearls on it, and a veil pinned on her hair, and the dress does not really fit her well, it sticks out a bit in the upper part, but one sees that she has made herself up, and the fingernails are well manicured, just as probably most women would do for her wedding. Well, she does not smile, but she does not look sad, either, but rather in peace with herself, she looks very calm into the camera towards the photographer.

2. It is either a hotel, or it is just her home, the house, where she is living. It looks rather as if she was ready now to go to her wedding, she has that determined expression, and is not wearing a wedding ring. In her face one sees first of all calm and also somehow confidence, and that determination, she does not look as if she had any doubts or as if she was scared, but she is comfortable with the idea that she is now getting married. She looks rather serious, maybe she is conscious of the seriousness of the thing: getting married is an important and serious decision, and she does not look as if she was taking it lightly.

3. I like the expression on her face, because it somehow expresses that (..) she is in peace with herself, and that confidence and determination rather than a barbie grin. I am obviously wondering, where are the other people, or first of all, where is the man who goes with her, why is she alone in the picture? I find it hard to imagine her with a man on her side, she seems to be actually content with being alone. And then, well, you see in the picture that she has made efforts for her appearance, that is what all wedding pictures have in common, all women somehow look like that. She does not look though as if it was the most important to her that she looks pretty, and I find that important and beautiful.