In his new series called Souvenirs (Memories), young Malian photographer Mohamed Camara took pictures of some of his friends posing next to an old photograph of them selves floating in a plastic bag full of water.
According to Camara bringing those elements together is like a statement about the relationship with the past, more or less remote: memories of the youth, of the family, of the mother-land; memories of moments that had to be left behind. Floating presence, fragile but remaining – still there, even when one doesn’t think about it, even if one denies the consciousness of this nostalgia and prefers on the contrary to keep it aside.
With this work, Camara is going on with his poetical exploration of everyday life, especially the most intimates feelings, an exploration he started with the Chambres maliennes (Malian Rooms, 2001-2002). The series Souvenirs (Memories) is also a sequel of the universe, sometimes closed to surrealism, that he staged with imagination and precision in the series Certains matins (Some mornings, 2005-2006): in a photograph exactly called “Some mornings not like the others”, Camara took a picture of himself waking up and discovering the floor of his bedroom covered with plastic bags full of water, the kind of waterbags one can buy on the side of the roads in Mali to refresh.
6 november – 4 december 2010
Galerie Pierre Brullé
25 rue de Tournon, 75006 Paris
