Fatemeh Baigmoradi: Untitled, from the series Its Hard to Kill
November 14, 2018
"My most recent work, "It's hard to kill", begun in 2017, was motivated by the fact that my parents have only a few surviving photos that portray them before the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. I am obsessed with the many photos that we no longer have.
Using other people's family photos, I try to reimagine the moments that my father, a member of the National Front party, burned many of the pictures that portrayed his family, friends and colleagues, due to the fear of being arrested. This same experience happens frequently for different people from different nations, during and after social revolutions.
Old family photos, as an object, have always held this aura for me. In "It's hard to kill" not only do I recontext photos, but I also manipulate them by inserting my story into them. I try to make everything look deceptively real, to invite the viewer to fully believe in what I have created.
The halo around some of the individuals is caused by burning, and focuses attention on questions about memory, history and their representation: How does self-censorship affect our memory and personal history? Is the halo a sign of loss of history, or rather a sign of bringing back the aura to the photographs?"
-Fatemeh Baigmoradi
