What is it that happens when the unwanted/unexpected appear, when the ghost manifest ?
Over the last decades, a large number of works in diverse disciplines: sociology, psychoanalysis, literary criticism, folklore, cultural studies, geography, or communication have sought to reinterpret stories of haunting as the return of traumatic memory.
Beyond the variety of contexts and approaches about the phenomenon or what is called hauntology, my work considers ghosts not only as things that are believed in (or not believed in), but also and above all, as an energy, as things that can happen, as events and as such they are what makes us see beyond, understand all the other events, all the other possibilities.
I have chosen to materialize these happenings on family photos.
Within this work, ghosts manifest not as terrifying revenants, but as beings, children, women, men that appear and gives us a sense of what is/was there, what is not said, what is silenced, what is heavy. What more could the photo say, what is hidden but transpires. By the emotions they set in motion, the doubts they stir, the possibilities they inspire, the ghosts generate questions, solidarity, humanity. They revive old traumas, create new ones, and redefine family stories.
They may also force us to recompose our stories anew.
Documenting an apparition invites us not only to ask what appears –but also what it is that the apparitions themselves make appear; what is made visible as a result of a ghost’s manifestation.