How well do we know other people? How true is the image we build from the first meeting? How much of this image carries over into later life? Can we perceive the boundary between an image woven from memories and emotions and a living person? To what extent is this image an illusion, and to what extent do we touch the real essence of the person’s personality?

What is now, has begun then is an attempt to tell the story of the fragility and transience of relationships with the loved ones. It is also an attempt to confront unconscious traumas passed from generation to generation. Finally, it is a reflection on the true nature of the ties that bind us to people. Are they thick stringy knots binding us to the past? Or are they ephemeral, fleeting phenomena that, despite their promise to stay with us forever, dissolve over time into oblivion? These are questions to which I am still searching for answers.

For years, I have searched through photo albums and dug into family histories, trying to learn something about my ancestors. I reconstructed the past from scraps I managed to snatch from my parents or grandparents from time to time, piecing together fragments of stories I heard as a child and juxtaposing them with the memories of relatives. Suddenly I realized that not only did I know little about my ancestors, who had been dead for decades, but that my parents and grandparents were just as foreign and unknown to me. Despite the deep emotional bond, I know little about them. They are more my internal construction and projection.

Digital collages based on photos from the family archive: