Ximena Echague
by Ximena Echague from New York City
Like all street photographers at home, without people in the streets, I have tried to portray reality and despair in isolation.
The new plague has confined us, allowing only for introspection, imagination and symbolism to capture the new fuzzy reality, the invisible risk, the permanent fear. You have too much time to think. Anxiety ebbs and flows, the past seems blurred, the present doesn't make sense, the future is uncertain. And yet you try to overcome the paralysis, to reinvent yourself.
Sometimes I seek protection in reassuring elements, like water, to help me fight the sad reality. Every morning I look at myself, trying to connect with the intense emotions caused by the confinement and the harsh reality. I write them, imagine them, and try to recreate them photographically.
I have tried different ways to overcome my anxiety, to continue living and, hopefully, also creating. This has been for me a long and constant struggle, and my self-portraits seek to portray those dark feelings of uncertainty and despair..
SELF-PORTRAITS: PHOTOGRAPHERS IN CONFINEMENT
Curated by Svetlana Bachevanova
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.
