My work – both images and videos – comes from my personal life and history which I use to discuss and investigate subjects I believe are meaningful. I am interested in psychologic and mental issues, in the constant and complex tension between fear and desire, in how our past and memories create sometimes subtle yet settled structures in our present. I am visually and conceptually fascinated by the power and delicacy of ordinary things that I perceive as allegories. Nature is a frequent subject of mine as it is an indispensable force that helps me to reconcile my difficulties and be at peace. Photography is for me a way to express my inner story while also a means of self discovery and self awareness.
It wasn’t simple. All of a sudden my small, tiny world, was starting to get bigger and bigger. Vast and mysterious like the sea. I was petrified by fear. The water of the ocean felt to me like the element of continuity between the old and the new. The huge vessel was reassuring like a floating squeaking medieval town whose walls defend it from the outside world but that could be beaten by a plague all of a sudden. The everyday stable movement forward encompassed distances that once seemed inconceivable to me. The journey became a discovery of possibility.
Never say never roots into my my personal history of panic attacks. It is a photographic series that was shot in 2015 when I decided to cross the Atlantic Ocean, as a passenger on board of a container ship. Six days from Antwerp/Belgium to Newark/USA to eventually reach Los Angeles by car and back again. At that time I could not fly on a plane. After years during which I felt I was tied in my movements and in my mind and I was scared about everything, I wanted and I needed to do something, for me. So I travelled as far as possible from home and, maybe, from myself. ‘Never say never’ is not a documentation. It is an exploration of my feelings and a glimpse through my intimate relationship with fear, desires, freedom, impotence and my psychological distress.
- Website
- www.carlottaguerra.com
- @cgcarlotta