The Camara Obscura

Photographic image methods – and the image itself – play an important role in therapeutic applications in trauma, such as those used in the EMDR technique (Desensitization and reprocessing through eye movements), or those used in Psychodrama techniques or in cognitive and neurological disorders of patients, such as psychotics, whose outbreaks suggest the cause and association of brain damage and chronicity involving memory loss, regardless of the patient's neuroplasticity, thus considering more serious cases such as Alzheimer's disease.

Analyzing the temporality of memory through photography as a method of documenting memories and consequently a desensitizing act because memory, despite being documented, can be subjective and questionable, it is possible to consider the decoding of photography a projection of the mathematical logical linearity of primitive communication, being an evolution of the noise uttered in a primate communication that proceeds the gesture (the performance - characterizing in art) and consequently the image, a technical evolution or the coding of the image.

This project proposes experiments on desensitizing processes using photographs and installations that suggest the recovery of memories. These installations are based on the assumption that communication is intuitive and if we go back to the primitivism of communication, starting from gestures (performance) and noise/symbols (decoding of the documentary photographic image) we can arrive at basic principles of human memory, thus including a dialogue more simplified within pathologies and disorders associated with memory loss, therefore, the development of this research is mainly a parallel alternative, using photography in psychiatric, psychological and neurological treatments.

This proposal aims to investigate and artistically translate the experience of memory loss by interviewing individuals with partially lost memories, as well as friends or family members of people who have experienced total memory loss. The goal is to narrate and visualize the stories related to these losses through photography, sound, and immersive installation. Participants will be divided into two specific groups: