I am a photographer. In photographing the city, I remap it intuitively and libidinally. I distort it. Places in the city are turned inward, into a mental space, into a projection of my own desires and deceptions. I do not speak of this city, of which I know very little, but speak from within the city. I am a tourist.
For me the location is full of fantasies, dreams. It reminds me of art, of other photographs and films. I am with myself in this unknown and yet so familiar landscape. A place already close to me, already seen. It feels uncanny. It feels as if I were at the confines of memory, in what is left under forms of impressions, traces of stories, fantasy, and dreams, but also deceptions, frustrations, fears and symptoms. I look at the city through moments of déjà vu.
This work explores the potential effects that images of the city can have on perception of time and space. With photographs of insignificant buildings and streets, theoretical and fictional writings, my work evolves in a postmodern and fragmented urban space, implicating the viewer in a feeling of déjà vu. At the borders of fantasies, dreams, memories, fears and impulses, the images draw the viewer’s sense of self into questions of desire, being and becoming.
Situating itself within a tradition of Urban Photography, this work also reflects on the photograph’s relation to time and duration. It refuses the view that photography is an arrest in time or a trace of the real. Instead it aims to convey a sense of movement and narrative. It also engages the viewer to reflect on philosophical and psychological possibilities that emerge from looking at images of an empty city.
Frederic Huska 