17th Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest Altered Images
For you, to remember her often

We take photos to remember, to leave a trace of ourselves, of our present and past. Barthes affirmed that thanks to these images we attest to our existence. What we see in the image, therefore, must have existed in some form in front of our eyes. And what if it were not so? If we could use them as a symbolic ground to imagine and create new scenarios? This work is the result of this research. I worked with archive images, trying to investigate the meaning of private and collective identity The images narrate my family history, they are of my grandmother, mother and aunt, but they also tell something about Doris and Mirta, women born and raised in the ‘20s and’ 40s, whom I only met through the family albums I was given. I have deconstructed the images from the past and integrated them in new scenery made of modern landscapes, thus playing with the meaning of memory. There is a word in Hebrew called "Tikkun ", which means "to mend”, to go back in time and repair past events, healing the world from mistakes that were made. This project aims at the impossible: to make it right, unify different narratives, change the final.

Photo Detail
Date Taken: 08.2018
Date Uploaded: 10.2019
Photo Location: Italy
Copyright: © claudia corrent