ELSA ARRAIS
be inspired
ARTIST'S STATEMENT //
We exist in a present where photography is as accessible as it is conditioned. Accessible to everyone at the touch of a cell phone but restricted in many contexts to those who want to use it in the shared space as a form of artistic expression. Based on this dichotomy, I search in the commonplace of everyday life for a voice that many times echoes beyond the expressiveness of a face; a search for notable physical expressions, as well as places' identity details, seeking to establish words capable of awakening emotions and imaginary (and imagery) interpretations in external observers, usually keeping the identity and intimacy of those portrayed intact.
The result of this balance between technique, emotion and delicacy is the creation of an ambivalent language dictionary, as complex as it is simple, which oscillates between light and shadow, geometry and emptiness, being and its outer contour, the concrete and distortion; between what remains immutable and what continues under construction; between freedom and repression.
As an existential metaphor, this dictionary continues its quest for permanent growth and mutation, in the hope that one day it will become extinct or transformed into a grammar that, complete in itself, forms part of the universal language of images of the present in which we exist. The present where photography is as accessible as it is conditioned, and therefore needs dictionaries.