Guaritoto Gonzalez Case
Venezuelan resident in Paris since 2002
Letter addressed to the office landlord
Letters from Paris
Ana Ramirez Case
Spanish nurse living in Paris since 2002.
Letter sent to the “Services de renseignement téléphonique”
Description:
You arrive at your office and discover a huge portrait with a letter glued on the door, or maybe you receive it by mail, there, or at home, or in your store…. When you see the portrait, the face of the protagonist seems known to you, the letter is directed at you, and when you start reading it, maybe your memory gets refreshed, maybe you recognize the sender, although he addresses you with other words. Maybe you remember…
Lettres de Paris is a photographic and literary documentary work of social reminiscences, made in the city of Paris and whose angle is all those foreigners and immigrants who have found in the language a barrier of communication and integration.
Resorting to a public writer, foreigners who may have felt lost, judged, humiliated and misunderstood for the simple fact of not being fluent enough in the French language, decide to send an elegant and well written letter to a recipient, whether a person or an institution, accompanied by his portrait. Behind each sender, there is a process, a complaint, but also the need for recognition, a search for inclusion and approximation to a new city that adopts them.
Oleñka transforms herself into a writer and public photographer, walks around with her portable desk, her old typewriter and her camera and puts herself at the service of all those who need to say something, opening the door to all those stories that are subjacent to the everyday life of a big city through their letters.
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Technical aspects:
Photo-Text Serie composed with B&W analogue images, letters and testimonials.
Photobook. Dummy nominated to the Luma Rencontres Dummy Book Award and exhibited in Rencontres d’Arles 2015.
Photography installation
Israel Garcia Case
Spanish painter, living in Paris since 2014
Letter sent to a bakery.
Bobigny’s Children Case
6 children, living in the 93th district from his birth.
Letter sent to a neighbour.
XY Case
(This woman testifies but wants to remain anonymous, she asks me not to put her name, and to always erase her face from my negatives).
Living in Paris since 2008.
Letter sent to her ex.
Exhibitions:
-October 2015. Rencontres Photographiques du 10ème arrondissement. Paris, France.
-October 2015. Comparatifs, exhibition collective Centre Jean Verdier. Paris, France.
-July 2015 / September 2015. Dummy Photobook exhibited in Rencontres Photographiques d’Arles. Arles, France