Brigida Lunetta

4 seconds behind a screen recording

1, 2, 3, 4 seconds and more

Listening and seeing

1, 2, 3, 4 seconds and even less

Seems to be enough to forget 

4, 5, 6, 7 seconds and we do not even question

What was given and what was left.

4 seconds, an image asking us to observe

Within 4 seconds an image comes back 

Simulacrum haunting our attention once again

4 and more seconds to question

Do we forget? 

On July 2017 I started to photograph online video-footage and television news about the migrant and refugee exodus towards Europe. The material collected throughout the research covers a period of five years, starting from 2013. Even if we are periodically overexposed by vivid, raw and hyper-defined images and incessant information, most of the time what remains in our mind is blurred, distorted, confused or forgotten. For this reason, I decided to photograph the video-footage through a long exposure (approximately 4’’) in order to return these images to a different form offering the possibility to slow down and reflect on our way of looking/not looking and forgetting. The photographed material was gathered from several media platforms and TV networks to include not only those images that are repeated and rebounded from one source to another but also those that are less frequent and less shown. Thus it seems that there are images that we forget because we are overexposed to them and others that will be forgotten because less displayed. 

The photographic mirror reflects, reclaims and diverts the fleeting images developed through the distance imposed by the screen in a way that invites to think about what happened and what was forgotten. Through this appropriation, new narratives, meanings, and readings could emerge, which possibly raise questions about the representation and the perception of the migrant and refugee exodus. The emphasis on image vanishing is a means to reflect on reality and its depiction, on memory and its rarefaction. The abstract language that emerges would detach the photographs from the media discourse usually built around them. Appearing through the fog of memories, the photographs become simulacra of our tendency to forget, memorial representations against the veil of oblivion.