Like Water Under the Bridge

How does one tackle the Hidden, Forgotten or Abandoned when approaching a context to which these categories apply? Moreover, how does one do this using photography, a medium inherently imbued in such acts as remembrance and documentation.

The Danube segment passing through Romania is ironically both the longest and the most neglected and poorly documented. A situation that has its roots in extensive years of careless or corrupt management, often indifferent to political shifts. These circumstances serving as backdrop, Like Water Under the Bridge  attempts to seize that which eschews usual documentation, using multiple photographic forms and layers.

The first is the restaging and capturing of a gesture accurately conveying the aforementioned notions of hiding, forgetfulness and abandon, i.e. the throwing in the air of various objects found in the Danube or on its shores and basin. Re-staging the moment toys with the apparent spontaneity of the frame, the flash’s hard-light-shine on matter usually serving as the only evidence of the contrary.

Using another play on light, by way of photograms made with the thrown objects, the series’ recurring theme of presence vs. absence reveals fully. Here object imprint inherently functions both as proof and lack thereof, as the dark-light dichotomy on the photographic emulsion can sway either way in distinguishing fullness or emptiness.

Similarly, the landscapes from which the items are chosen are hidden landscapes. Not accessible to regular tourists, known just by locals, belonging to the people of the Danube (to the extent that any piece of land can belong to humans anymore) these places seem forgotten even by Industry or Consumerism for now. A thin plastic veil is used in presenting them, covering the landscapes, leaving the viewer to choose if or how much they want to see. The flux and the flow of the river also manifests here, as is the air – blown by a fan and giving birth to momentary forms.

With the occasion of the Like Water Under the Bridge exhibition at Galeria Posibilă an homonym publication was launched on the 25th of October 2019, featuring a theoretical text by Raluca Oancea Nestor and a poem by Jasmina Al-Qaisi.