Here, in photography, secrets must be believed... (when you see it, it comes back to mind)
The moral of the story: here, within the photograph, secrets must be believed. This is what I seemed to see. Until I arrived at, or perhaps started from, a single photograph. A single photograph that, from my point of view, encapsulates the meaning of this research project. An incredible story: almost impossible to believe but with an internal coherence that borders on the inexplicable. Incredible, inexplicable, difficult to see: evidently, in resonance with one of the suggestions proposed in the introduction to the field research, I too had understood nothing of the so-called here. Paradoxically, I cannot see or focus, and therefore I cannot understand, or vice versa (curious analogy with the French “prendre une photo”)? Photography, therefore, becomes memory, and memory dissolves the story. What is this place here? It is the place I could once have called home. Below is an account of what remains in my memory of a place that, by chance or by fate, I am not here to call home. It is just a story, a kind of family secret that is not really a secret at all. But whether true or not, secrets must be believed. This is what my grandmother said about Jovencan. After that, I no longer understood anything about the ‘here’ we were talking about.