Carolle Benitah in lensculture:
I started to be interested in my family pictures when I was leafing through a family album and found myself overwhelmed by an emotion that I could not define the origin of. These photographs were taken 40 years earlier, and I could not even remember the moments they were shot, nor what preceded or followed those moments. But the photos reawakened an anguish of something both familiar and totally unknown, the kind of disquieting strangeness that Freud spoke about. Those moments, fixed on paper, represented me, spoke about me and my family, told things about my identity, my place in the world, my family history and its secrets, the fears that constructed me, and many other things that contributed to who I am today.
I decided to explore the memories of my childhood to help me understand who I am and to define my current identity. To begin, I carry out “excavations”. Like an archeologist, I dig out the pictures in which I appear from family albums and the shoe boxes full of photographs. I choose snapshots because they are related to memories and to loss.
More here.
