Anita Pouchard Serra
by Anita Pouchard Serra from Buenos Aires, Argentina
I would like you to be here still, to be flooded with questions, for a hug, so that the weight of your presence and your experience shakes any of my black thoughts in the middle of a privileged quarantine.
I'm glad you're not here, that I don't see your eyes blurred and your face closed when you hear the word “war” in the voice of a State, that I don't feel your soul wavering and your heart squeezed, that no one imposes you to stay within four walls again.
I grew up with my grandfather, deported from the Second World War, with his memory, with his stories, with his little acts of resistance and his archives.
Among them, a piece of paper that he managed to keep as a relic. A minimal and forbidden space where he could unfold his dreams in the midst of hunger, confinement and uncertainty. As a cook in a large restaurant before the war, he wrote until there was no room for a single word about the party menus. The recipes, the shopping list, he even drew a table with plates. It was the way—the way of surviving mentally what he was living.
A piece of paper that marked my life, my upbringing, a lesson for any moment in life, for any downturn, and that today resonates, resonates, resonates and challenges me, the days of sad dawn.
Double exposure: Buenos Aires, Argentina 2020 + Untermassfeld, Germany 1944
SELF-PORTRAITS: PHOTOGRAPHERS IN CONFINEMENT
Curated by Svetlana Bachevanova (USA/France)
A collection of self-portraits made by photojournalists from five continents during the unprecedent lockdown due to the corona virus pandemic.
Photographers are people on the road, living to document the lives of others.
Constrained by the lockdown, many of them had their first experience of being still long enough to begin seeing and understanding small details about who they are, their lifestyles and values, that were overshadowed while they were busy. These self-portraits express their experience.
This is a unique collection of self-portraits from some of the best lenses in photojournalism at an historic moment.
Photographers in Confinement is a project in process and I welcome additional submissions from photojournalists at svetlana@fotoevidence.com
I am looking for potential exhibition partners in the USA and abroad.
Svetlana Bachevanova is a founder and publisher of FotoEvidence, long time photojournalist and curator.
