I’m very happy to be attending the Chico Portfolio Review, organized by the Charcoal Photo Book, next week. While working on For I Shall Already Have Forgotten You, I understood that It was important to have the material seen and shared by as many people as possible before its final production.
Although I’m still looking for a home to publish the book, I’m sure that the reviewers would provide a lot of valuable feedback.
For I Shall Already Have Forgotten You is a photobook that works as a visual elegy. The entire process started in 2016, when a small Trailer Home Community a few blocks away from my home got sold to a real estate development. Since then, I started looking and paying more attention to the real estate developments around the South Florida Mobile Home Communities. The photography, the editing, and the research took another 5 years from that initial event. It also took a while before I could understand what was my take on this and how things worked with one another.
For I Shall Already Have Forgotten You moves across the timeline. It goes to the past, present, and future while juxtaposing glimpses of these communities.
The project revolves around the concept of displacement. That has been a very important personal issue for me. You can say that it’s omnipresent throughout my work. There are many examples of displacement across the country and the world. I can attempt to say that the book describes an economic reality that everyone is exposed to, yet nobody is attempting to address.
Documenting these communities through photographs was an important aspect of the entire process. It allowed me to slow down these rapid urban changes while trying to understand what these fluctuations really mean. Without it, they might be no recollection of what once was.