He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it.
“Where is it? What death?”
There was no fear because there was no death. In place of death there was light.
“So that's what it is!” he suddenly exclaimed aloud. “What joy!”
The Death of Ivan Ilych, by Leo Tolstoy
Using photography as a tool and having influences that start from academic painting, to postmodern self-portraits, I use the ritual of photographing the self, to understand the concept of death and to release the fear towards it. I keep a three-sided role, that of the photographer, the photographed and the spectator. The art of photography by itself is a testimony of being, but also a rehearsal of the imminent and inevitable death. As Roland Barthes describes it in Camera Lucida, a strange act is taking place when we take a portrait. We lose the sense of self and a little representation of death takes place, where the photographed cannot perceive himself/herself neither as subject nor object, but more as a subject who feels it is turning to an object.
