Barthes’ Lover is a time-lapse video consisting of more than 100 images of a found photograph. In this portrait from the 1960s, an anonymous young woman is basking in the sun on a bench, her slightly tilted.
Who was this woman and who took her photograph? A person whose life and history had slipped into the anonymous ephemera of a Prague antique shop.
The image encaptured me the moment I discovered it. For some time, the photograph lay on a table in my studio. One day I noticed how the sun entered the space and began a playful interaction with the image.
The situation in the photograph is re-created as the sun illuminates the photo, casting its light through the window. The found image comes back to its (after)life as it turns into a photographic object, being shaped and sculpted by the warmth of the sun.
