Portrait Projects
From: Scars, Caresses and Souvenirs
Mass media, big business and myopic governments have inadvertently conspired to make us forget to remember ourselves and each other.
Empathy, co-operation and the power of memory are sometimes the only tools we have to resist and oppose and create something new, positive and inclusive.
I had the honor of being an artist-in-residence at RaumArs in Rauma, a seafaring town in south-western Finland, where I worked with homeless men from the Toivontalo project and with the attendants and staff from the Valo School for Adults.
I was also an artist-in-residence for ARTifariti VI and a guest of the Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic in the Waliya of Boujdur, a Saharawi reugee camp in southern Algeria. Thousands of Saharawis live a grueling life in 5 camps deep in the desert. There they have waited for decades to return to their homeland, Western Sahara, unofficially occupied by Morocco since 1975 when the Spanish left. I worked with landmine victims and with my host family and their friends in Boujdur.
These photographs were made after I asked people where on their body the world had touched them and left an effect they had never forgotten.
People showed me everything from where they had been kissed by a loved one, to where they had once had a limb.
Seemingly disparate, these communities are at opposite ends of climate, topography, religion and geo-politics.
Yet I found that when the images and stories were shared, people consistently amplified their similarities with each other rather then focus on their differences.