Found photographs edited and
assembled with post cards, letters and objects
2010 - 2017
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One day, while walking through a flea market, I discovered a photo album of a couple on holidays in the region of Provence, France. It was likely in the 60s. They took photographs of each other in the fields, by the sea, at historic sites, cities and other landscapes as they travelled alone, isolated from the rest of the world. None of the photos appeared to show them together, which may indicate that they had no contact with other people during that trip.
The woman appeared to be older than the man, and his gaze towards her through the camera captivated me. I think they were lovers, a couple on a love journey, likely in secret. I was moved by the abandonment of those photographs, taken and kept with sweetness and affection, and I imagined different possibilities for the story of that photo album. My initial thought was that this was a forbidden romance. The second: because the attachment to romantic memories is more typical of the female universe, it was the woman who kept the album. Third, after being preserved secret for a long time, the album was eventually discarded with her death.
From that day on, I began to look for discarded photographs of couples wherever I went. The work presented herein is the result of that search: a collection of recurring images of couples found, in almost all cultures. Love stories that were recorded and, at a certain point, discontinued, damaged and lost.
This is a work in progress. I create fictional narratives from abandoned memories by editing the images, adding colours and combining them with text and other found images and objects. My intention is to offer a memory of those faded love stories, giving new meaning to the records that were eventually discarded by the end of the relationship, death or some immeasurable embarrassment.
Through the creation of fictional narratives for anonymous romances, the present work commemorates the encounter and separation of two individuals, driven by love and passion, fear, death, and the numerous unforeseen occurrences of a lifetime.
_Neyde Lantyer
Found in Amsterdam, 2010.
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