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I try to capture the peace of a diorama, an affected, petrified reality, instead of a decisive instant or eloquent grimace. In a reinterpretation of the concept of tableau vivant I stage bodies in intimate spaces, where I impose immobility to them as an interpretation. In this constructed reality, the bodies suggest a movement, an action that appears to be fixed, slowed down. The present is sacrificed choosing the constructed image instead of the original, the suggested action instead of the real. To be halfway between intent and effect. A space where despite its privacy, no one interprets himself, where no one flaunts anything that is not directly to be seen. It’s the triumph of falsity, of appearances, where time, in this society that is so linked with movement and speed, is diluted for the personal pleasure of its observer. But contrary to what could be a first reading more exclusively associated to pictorialism, I try to show a reality that is averse to empathy, the obvious and immediate. Apathy as a critical attitude to the systematic use of the contemporary young man´s image as a motor of desire and advertising container, always ready for the older generation’s enjoyment. “Be cool, show no emotions” Lou Reed told his live audience in Take no prisioners, emotionless. It was the way in which Cindy Sherman described her Film stills, the cinema of Jarmush, the models showed by Beecroft, adolescents as seen by Rineke Dijkstra… It is no doubt a photogenic void, but also an act of resistance against the vulgarity of the image that says it all, borrowed, and learned from other photos or television.

The Absentees

Photos and Text: © Maider Mendaza