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It Has Been 7 Years, I Am Here, 2023
The time I have spent observing the universe under a calm, nocturnal sky always sends me on a long journey.
This work is an analog photographic piece based on images of celestial bodies extracted from the Stellarium* star map.
These images were obtained through direct observation of the sky.
My personal experiences and memories were transformed into fragments of text, associated with notions of time, light, and astronomical distance.
Printed onto each lens, these narrative fragments are connected to one another, forming a kind of cartography.
Light is refracted through the lens placed above a light box, blurring the photographic memories and allowing us to experience, with intensity and depth, the passage of time.
* Stellarium is software that enables the identification of celestial bodies by connecting to an astronomical telescope during sky observation.
This work is an analog photographic piece based on images of celestial bodies extracted from the Stellarium* star map.
These images were obtained through direct observation of the sky.
My personal experiences and memories were transformed into fragments of text, associated with notions of time, light, and astronomical distance.
Printed onto each lens, these narrative fragments are connected to one another, forming a kind of cartography.
Light is refracted through the lens placed above a light box, blurring the photographic memories and allowing us to experience, with intensity and depth, the passage of time.
* Stellarium is software that enables the identification of celestial bodies by connecting to an astronomical telescope during sky observation.
It Has Been 7 Years, I Am Here,
analogue photography, lenses, text, Ø 7.5 cm ( lenses ), 73 × 73 cm ( light box ), 2023It Has Been 7 Years, I Am Here.
Here, 9,384 km away from where I used to live.
Sometimes I dream. In my dreams,
I am with my childhood friends and people I no longer see,
in places I used to frequent.
Small things I do not usually think about, or barely remember.
My small bedroom
A walk near my home
A restaurant I used to go to often
A beer with friends
The arcade I visited after work
Weekly waste collection with neighbors
Karaoke in a sauna
Chicken delivery early in the morning
Arguments with loved ones during holidays
Awkward conversations with my brother
Family meals
From time to time, I try to recall the place where I lived
and the kind of days I spent there, but my memory remains unclear,
as if it all belonged to a distant past.
Is 7 years long enough for memories to disappear?
The intense moments and precious memories
I thought I would never forget
seem to have evaporated through time
and the distance I still must travel.
Light travels at approximately 300,000 km per second.
The distance between here and my home equals 32 seconds of light.
The light emitted by stars comes from much farther away
and has been traveling for much longer.
As light travels, stars carry traces of time.
I see stars.
I move backward through time.
Following the traces of light left by the stars,
I attempt to recover fragments of the past I wish to remember.
Whether seven years or a distance of 9,384 km,
it is only an instant on the scale of the universe.
Because these are moments I can never return to.
- One night in 2023, during an observation