I-also-wanted-to-be-Robert-Capa-but-not-to-take-his-photos

I also wanted to be Robert Capa, but not to take his photos is a conversation with myself about my contradictions and reflections on photography. It is the process that leads me to my space for freedom (Flusser, 2014), to weave the photographs I cannot let go of.

This project began in 2021 as a self-ethnographic investigation rooted in the arts, and the result is four tool-artifacts: A virtual wall, a notebook-journal, a photographic essay, and a crocheted blanket.

Translating photographs into textile proposes understanding photography not only as testimony but as a visual fabric that passes through us, embedding itself in our collective imagination. This artistic research invites reflection on the power of photography.

/ crocheted blanket /

Photography is a fabric—a fabric of relationships, of power, of visualities, of subjectivities, of time. Photography is a fabric that has been imagined and created, spun and woven. A photograph is a fabric of photographs. My photographs are the ones made by others, all those worth keeping, those that deserve our broken world and might save it. My photographs are also all the other photos, the ones that are just other photos.

Photography is a fabric of contradictions: it is landscape and portrait, window and mirror. It is a blanket that wraps around me, that sometimes cradles me and sometimes itches.The photographs I can no longer forget, tear, erase, or burn, itch at me. What should I do with all of them? I have woven all those photographs, which, even if I no longer want them, will always remain part of me. And once woven, I wonder: are they still photographs?