Index of Intimacy

‘Index of Intimacy’ is an artist book project about and how we translate our memory into color and texture.  It is also an exercise in self-exposure, making my life the subject of my work and myself the object. A consequent of Internet in our daily life has the private photo become common to share. Cellphone pictures and computer webcams can make us share our most intimate moments in an instant.

The book is based of 17 cellphone photographs. The pictures are documenting day-to –day activities and private moments. From each image I take a color sample, and make a solid color photo in photoshop. The solid color photo becomes a color representation of the image, a memory.  In book the Index of Intimacy, the color photo is on one side of the spread and a watercolor interpretation of the color on the other. Each spread has a title, taken from what the ‘real’ picture represents like a diary extract; ‘Lips’, ‘New Yorker Hotel’ and ‘Change of location’. The ‘real’ picture, the cellphone picture, is printed and hidden in folds in the book so the viewer can pick them out and see the original picture.

To have the actual image hidden in the books folds forces the viewer to becomes a voyeur, to pick up the picture and pulling something private, viewing something intimate.

The solid color picture represents a sensation, the valence of the moment, the feeling o the picture. The watercolor repetition, handmade with a more fragile and sensitive look gives the color life.  But the book is also about self-reflection, viewing, reviewing my own life and indexing it.  The index creates a distance and a way for me to make myself the object of investigation.