VANITAS VANITATUM 2023
The project stems from a personal need: to explore that sense of precariousness that creeps into our lives—and that sometimes runs through me. To address this, I combine self-portraiture with the *Vanitas* iconographic tradition, a genre of painting that uses symbolic objects to remind us of life’s transience. I do not interpret the biblical phrase "Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas" as a call to resignation, but rather as a clear-eyed awareness of the fragility that accompanies us. Every element in the images—the skull, the hourglass, the mirror, the butterflies, the clock, the dried flowers, the music—speaks to this dual nature of existence: its luminous beauty and its inevitable transience.
A key aspect of the project is the very materiality of the images. Before printing, I treated the photographic paper with a delicate natural dye derived from plants. This choice introduces an element of transformation: over time, the paper will change—reacting to light and oxidizing—in ways we cannot currently foresee. It is a slow, unpredictable process, much like our own future. In this sense, the photograph ceases to be a static image and becomes a living organism, destined to evolve. And through this change, it reflects the precariousness of our own existence—as well as its beauty, at once fragile and luminous.
