A desire to forget and the need to remember
ANAMNESIS 2018 - 2020
Featuring Aliki Christoforou Words by Nastasia Khmelnitski
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Aliki Christoforou started her career with a BA and MA degree in architecture from ENSA Paris Val de Seine in France. For several years Aliki worked in this field as an architect and scenographer before deciding to gain an MA in Photography from ENSAV La Cambre in Belgium. Looking back at her experience, Aliki explains that the two disciplines have common elements such as light, materiality, and narration.
The road accident became a turning point in Aliki’s career, which led to prolonged hospitalization and the beginning of documenting her life and experiences in the hospital.
ANAMNESIS (2018-2020) is a book that presents memories from the hospitalization period. It was published with Libraryman and was a recipient of the Libraryman Award. The images are presented as diptychs and triptychs and propose a quest of regaining memory of the painful moments. Aliki describes the process of recollection, “I discovered all these moments that appeared in the images that I had no recollection of; they seemed very distant and dusty to me, unreachable. This finding was surprising, even terrifying.” In this interview, we speak about her works ANAMNESIS, the ongoing experimental video project The Grieving Sea, and the new project Seascapes. We discuss in-depth one of the main themes found in Aliki’s work: ecology through the prism of merging reality and fiction.
ANAMNESIS 2018 - 2020
‘I have felt a real attraction for the photographic medium for a long time. Since adolescence, I would say. When I left high school, I already wanted to orient myself towards artistic studies, more specifically, photography.’
My Story
Hi Aliki, let’s start by speaking about your decision to pursue photography?
I have felt a real attraction for the photographic medium for a long time. Since adolescence, I would say. When I left high school, I already wanted to orient myself towards artistic studies, more specifically, photography. I remember applying to several colleges and taking entry exams; I had even been admitted to some of them. Unfortunately, at the time, my parents considered that being an artist was not a job. So, I found myself studying architecture in Paris. It was a compromise between my desires and their expectations. I must, however, admit that I really enjoyed it. The intrinsic interdisciplinary nature of architecture makes it extremely creative and interesting. I then started working in Paris as an architect and scenographer. Photography at this stage fell into the category commonly referred to as a 'hobby': I was taking nice vacation photos.
How did it come about and were the first themes you worked on?
One day, on my way home from work on my motorcycle, I had a serious road accident. I got hit by a car, which cost me nearly a year of hospitalisation. It turned out that my birthday was a few days after my admission to the emergency room. My relatives, who knew the love I had for the medium, gave me an analog camera that accompanied me throughout my hospitalisation. The device was constantly placed on my bedside table, to the astonishment of the hospital staff, who did not understand why I was immortalising these painful moments that it was probably better to forget. This is how I found myself photographing my daily life in the hospital, which consisted mainly of my room and my legs since I was immobilised for several months. I would say that this was the first 'project' that I led. Besides, without this accident, I don't know if I would be studying visual arts today. However, at the time, I was not carrying out a project. I did not perceive it in this way. It was not conscious. My modus operandi and my relationship to photography were ultimately quite similar to when I photographed my holidays and surroundings: I immortalised my days, my environment to keep a memory, a trace. The project as such was born afterwards.
ANAMNESIS 2018 - 2020
‘I found myself photographing my daily life in the hospital, which consisted mainly of my room and my legs since I was immobilised for several months. I would say that this was the first 'project' that I led.’
ANAMNESIS 2018 - 2020
The Profession
What are the main characteristics of working as an architect that affected how you photograph today? How does it influence the way you present the objects and the story?
I'm not sure I can answer this question with certainty, as I'm still in the early stages of my photographic practice, discovering myself every day. But it is clear that there are a lot of similarities between these two disciplines. In fact, it seems to me that there are so many that I don't know where to start. For example, they have in common their most central element without which neither could exist: light. Light reveals the architecture and sculpts it. It is the basis of the design of a space, as it is the basis of the birth of a photograph. Both of the disciplines are a creative play of light and shadows, of visual compositions. In this sense, I think playing and composing with light is familiar to me, be it in space or an image.
I also think about materiality. I'm interested in bringing a reflection on the materiality of photography, linking it with the narratives of the images. I would say it's a central element in my practice today, and that's why I work a lot with film or with older techniques, like gum bichromate, which allow me to be closer to the materiality. It also happens to be a central element in architecture, one of the main vectors of emotions, at least in my eyes, and that is why I also pay particular attention to it in my architectural practice. I've always preferred to work on smaller-scale projects rather than larger buildings so that I can really go into detail and give thought to that sort of thing. I like being in contact with materials.
Finally, I find that what the two practices have in common is a certain form of narration. This may seem less obvious concerning architecture, but in reality, other than its practical aspects, we often think of spaces or buildings as routes. How are we going to introduce visitors to architecture? What do we show first? What next? What is the emotion we aim to generate? The route is a succession of architectural episodes. We go from point A to point B, and the challenge is to generate emotions all along this journey by reflecting on dimensions, proportions, angles, colours, materials, light and shadows, ambiance, etc., which give character to the space and transmit to the user a sequence of unexpected experiences. I think the analogy between photography and the moving image is ultimately quite obvious. More generally, I would say that in architecture, as in photography, we first imagine projects, then we go ahead to their realisation. Architecture has definitely brought a certain form of a conceptual approach to my work today.
ANAMNESIS 2018 - 2020
‘We go from point A to point B, and the challenge is to generate emotions all along this journey by reflecting on dimensions, proportions, angles, colours, materials, light and shadows, ambiance, etc., which give character to the space and transmit to the user a sequence of unexpected experiences.’
ANAMNESIS
ANAMNESIS, the book of 500 copies published with Libraryman and a recipient of the Libraryman Award, presents your experience of the recovery process in the hospital after the car accident. Anamnesis stands for the act of remembering. Tell us about this tension between memory, the real, and the lost, as presented in the book.
After leaving the hospital, I developed all the films that had been accumulated over the months, and I discovered all these moments that appeared in the images that I had no recollection of; they seemed very distant and dusty to me, unreachable. This finding was surprising, even terrifying. I wondered for some time what was the origin of this inability to remember; was it due to a medical origin, or was it rather the repetitiveness of my days, or simply a desire not to remember? Out of habit, I wanted to keep these photos in an album, as I did with my photos previously. But once I started flipping through it, I almost felt like I had images of someone else's life in my hands. It's a very unsettling feeling. What was revealed to me through these photographs had indeed taken place, but it did not correspond to my perception of 'reality.'
This is how the desire was born to reveal in my images the memories of this foggy period as they really existed for me in a veiled, opaque, and mysterious cloud. I decided to sign up for a silver photo printing course that enabled me to start manipulating my prints in the darkroom. I wanted to detach these images from their indexical value, from the famous 'ça-a-été' of Barthes, to reflect the failures of my memory but also the paradox I found myself in: a desire to forget and, at the same time, the need to remember. Memory is what allows us to look into our past, but my own was going blind.
The term 'memory' encompasses today the concepts of remembrance and recall, concepts that are completely confounded. But at the time of ancient Greece, these were two distinct notions that designated the occurrence of memory and the quest for memory. On the one hand, there was the mnèmè [μνήμη] for passive memory, the simple conservation of a moment perceived from the past and which was relative to our current life. On the other hand, there was the anamnesis [ἀνάμνησις] for the active or reminiscent memory, that is the search for the memory drawn from the past, which was linked to our forgotten previous lives, but remained engraved in the eternal memory of our soul since, for the ancient Greeks, the human soul would be immortal and would reincarnate. I wanted this memory quest in which I found myself to be sensed. And while working in the darkroom, I found that there was a strong analogy with the search for the correct exposure time: I was trying to make the images appear, as I did with my memories. That is why I decided to also work with diptychs and triptychs.
ANAMNESIS 2018 - 2020
‘I grew up in Brussels, but my parents, at the slightest opportunity, took my brother and me to our home in Syros, an island in the Cyclades, where we found ourselves literally surrounded by this vast expanse of water from which emanates a certain spirituality.’
The Grieving Sea
The Grieving Sea is one of your new projects in progress. What is interesting about it — apart from the topic — is the fact it is a video project. Could you tell about the idea for the aesthetics chosen for this work and how it started?
This work is still at a buzzing stage. I would not yet really know how to talk about the final form it will take, as it is evolving little by little every day. It concerns the sea and, more specifically, the Mediterranean sea, which is dear to me. I grew up in Brussels, but my parents, at the slightest opportunity, took my brother and me to our home in Syros, an island in the Cyclades, where we found ourselves literally surrounded by this vast expanse of water from which emanates a certain spirituality. I have associated it with a feeling of happiness and serenity, absolute calm, and carelessness.
Over time, however, I realised the political, social, and environmental issues that this marine space is associated with. Today, there is this never-ending immigration tragedy. Greece and the rest of the coastal states are accused, among other things, of pushing immigrants back to sea and abandoning them in this often forgotten space, helpless. This wonderful sea in which the most fortunate among us swim, insouciant and indifferent, is, in reality, one of the deadliest sea crossings on the planet; a cemetery that we try to pass over in silence. There is also the sea’s fragility, which was ignored for too long and has led to the ecological disaster we are experiencing today: aquatic life decimation, marine pollution, misuse of marine resources, etc. The UN has announced that this decade will be the Ocean Decade, to bring the world to take part in a more intimate, profound, and emotional way with this battered ocean.
It is this shift in perception concerning the sea that this video is about. I want it to arouse strong emotions about the disappearance, the notion of loss, and mourning. The relationship of this work with space is important. I have imagined an immersive installation where three large screens will be arranged in such a way as to envelop the viewer and plunge them into this grieving sea. I want visitors to be overwhelmed, for it to be a journey into a quasi-spiritual, contemplative universe that unfolds into something more disturbing. Real work is carried out on the soundtrack in collaboration with a musician who mixes recordings of aquatic sounds with Greek laments that I have made. These lyrical songs of mournful characters express sorrow and pain at the death of a loved one. Their origin is in ancient Greece's spiritual tradition. Although they tend to disappear, they are fortunately still sung today at the deceased's funeral in some remote parts of the country.
ATLANTIDE In progress
Ecological & Social Scenery
The main themes in your new work come to discuss the current pressing situation, requesting the viewer to rethink the meaning and the effect the actions will have on the future. In what way do you aim to present these themes? How does the topic evolve from the actual scene you photograph to the final image after developing it in the darkroom?
What attracts me and really interests me in a work, beyond its aesthetic dimension, is its ability to generate self-reflection in me, a questioning, a change, even if only tiny, in my way to perceive the world around me, but without this being done in a didactic way. It is this subtle relationship between the poetic and the 'political,' in the broad sense of the term, that inspires me and that I seek in my practice. I try to offer poetic proposals that are composed of themes and questions that are important to me and which are engaged in the diverse cultural histories that are my own. I think it's really important to try to explore these questions in a different way than what we are used to seeing in the newspapers or any other type of information medium that basically tends to make us numb. That's why I like to mix reality and fiction. When I work with photography, the darkroom becomes, for me, a field of experimentation that combines chemistry, light, and time to reveal new ways of transposing not only the visible but also the invisible. Like I said before, I am interested in bringing a reflection on the materiality of photography, linking it with the narratives of the images. I like offering photography another dimension and carrying the glance beyond the common use of the medium by detaching it from its indexical dimension. There is, therefore, a real work that follows the initial picture, which makes it possible to suggest several layers of reading to the images.
ATLANTIDE In progress
ATLANTIDE In progress
‘What attracts me and really interests me in a work, beyond its aesthetic dimension, is its ability to generate self-reflection in me, a questioning, a change, even if only tiny, in my way to perceive the world around me, but without this being done in a didactic way.’
ATLANTIDE In progress
A Sneak Peek
Could you provide us a sneak peek into the project you’re currently working on or some of the themes in development?
Right now, I am working on a few projects simultaneously. This past year I have been carrying out research and work related essentially to the concept of Anthropocene and its socio-environmental implications. Besides the Grieving Sea, I'm working on this other project, Seascapes, which also offers a sliding gaze over the sea. It's an experimental work in gum bichromate that echoes the homonymous series of the famous Japanese photographer, Hiroshi Sugimoto, a series that I discovered a while ago and that has never left my mind since.
I have to admit that I'm a bit obsessed with the sea at the moment, and the works of artists such as Allan Sekula and Enrique Ramirez, among others, are a great source of inspiration. I have also initiated a project that draws on the political and philosophical scope of the Atlantis myth to build a fictional story, anchored in reality, on a contemporary Atlantis threatened with disappearance by the sea level rise. The idea is to make tangible a real but still barely visible threat that weighs on submersible territories by manipulating some initial photographs of these places in the darkroom. What interests me in this work is to exploit the photographic tool, not only as a reproduction of reality but also, and above all, as the imaging of a possible future reality.
