Paisajes invisibles

Paisajes invisibles (Invisible landscapes) - 2014
Digital photography
Variable dimensions

An invisible landscape conditions the visible one. Italo Calvino, Invisible cities

A person who is physically absent can become present in our memory when we voluntarily interact with their material possessions, like their personal objects. However, there are also spontaneous and immaterial interactions that allow me to vividly evoke a person or a moment in the past. This spontaneous interaction has an effect on me in the form of light (a particular type of warm light, not too bright, not too dark). The way this light passes through windows, alights on surfaces and is reflected by walls and objects, reminds me of my childhood home, where light embodied a sense of protection and tranquility. Like a Proust’s Madeleine, this kind of light makes me involuntarily travel through time and space to the past; This light not only belongs to the space I perceived it for the first time, it belongs everywhere giving my memory the possibility of being anywhere too.

Paisajes invisibles is a video and a photographic research of this specific kind of light, a haunting of ephemeral instants, and its manifestations in a strange city I explored for the first time. The symbolism of this kind of light, invisible to other people, is a way to create an unforgettable relation of belonging with a foreign place by means of memory.

This project was created during an artistic residency, awarded by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, in Casa Tres Patios (Medellin) between October and November 2014.

Concept, art direction and production: Laura Criollo-Carrillo