Portrait of my mother as a young woman is a digital photo manipulation on an actual photo of my mother as a young woman that I used to admire as a child. The face of the portrait was erased as a reference to Roland Barthes’s infamous essay Camera Lucida and the themes of loss, memory, overcoming trauma and formation of identity of my solo exhibition Päivän Hulluus at Galleria Huuto.
In Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes the author writes: ”There I was, alone in the apartment where she had died, looking at these pictures of my mother, one by one under the lamp, gradually moving back in time with her, looking for the truth of the face I had loved.” He then discovers a picture of his deceased mother as a child and continues: ”I studied the little girl and at last rediscovered my mother”.
Whilst creating Portrait of my mother as a young woman I was trying to approach the photo as if it was a found photo – to create an anomaly and an anonymity to a personally significant picture. The photo was exhibited alongside the collection of collage works Untold where the people in the images have been instead cut out by hand with a penknife.
A portrait of my mother as a young woman has also been the cover of the philosophical magazine Niin & Näin 4/19 issue, where several works of mine where used as illustration.
