A supplemental constellation of images was particularly tailored just for this event. It includes twelve fragmented photographs which depict six distinctively chosen spreads out of the 45 book. Those are mounted and floating as pairs in six frames and are arranged in an extended assemblage to support the feeling of travel and continuity. The constellation’s imagery unveils hidden implications touching on themes of melancholy, longing, sorrow but also humour and sarcasm.
Furthermore, the visitor will find a small framed c-print depicting a key scene framed by the train window. A photograph of a boy and his father heading along a train platform to welcome their arriving mother. A notion, which is connected to the memory of my deepest longings but as well to the universal theme of family culture.
Finally, right at the entrance, the visitor will face a large image from Ukraine, which was photographed in May 2013, eight months before the beginning of the ongoing conflict. It is taken with a large-format camera in the Tricolor technique, the same principle Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky used to document the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th-century. The framed print depicts a steaming metal plant placed in the suburbs of Donetsk. For me, it was a metaphor for a visual connection between my grandfather and me. While it was indistinguishable from the first images I saw as a child from our flat window in the high raised building, it also was most probably the last image he saw in his short life, dying two months before reaching the age of 45 in a metal plant during his deportation in East Ukraine. This framed work also hints toward the main project, which will be released in 2021.
The project’s imagery confronts the viewer with impressions of present-day Europe and the narrative may provide an opportunity to understand a forgotten part of our common history.