The Time Elapsed Between Two Frames

In this project I have reproduced old photographs from various family albums with descendants of the people photographed in the original ones. I have chosen people with significant physical resemblance to their relatives. What initiated this project was a self portrait with my partner, reproducing a photograph of my parents which was taken 40 years earlier.

I am fascinated with extreme resemblance of people to their parents in general, and the way in which I resembles mine. I wanted to recapture a moment in time, a photograph taken 40 years ago, a spontaneous, unstaged, natural occurrence. I also wished to see what would it feel like re-enacting, refiguring a tableau, poising as my parents.

Performance is a daily action requiring a person to adapt his behaviour to the people surrounding him. Different surroundings call for an adaptive demeanour. For example, a role played by a parent will be different to a role played by the son. In this project, a double act was required: older generations put on an act, according to the role that they were playing in the photographer's life, wishing to convey to the camera and the viewer the part they are playing in this "scene". The reenactment by a son or a grandchild calls for both imitation and interpretation by the modern time subject. However, the true nature of the original act is unknown to the younger generations, as they did not know their relatives at the time the original photographs were taken.

They can only guess what was happening during the primary act; one short moment later, with the assumption of the originally envisaged role played, and a distinct expression can be exactly the same as in the original, even in a time span of 102 years.

Physical similarities elevate questions of identity, sometimes living in the shadow of parents: to what extent does similar physical appearance necessarily accompany similar characteristics; are people with similar features more likely to take similar decisions; are they likely to follow their predecessors footsteps because of likeness, and are they aware of that. A short loop of videos accompanies the photographs, depicting the moments that could have taken place before and after the ‘decisive moment’.