Soulscapes series explores the individual’s perception of its surroundings, the alternative realities, and the constant change in memories over time. Fragile inner landscapes appear in the photographs, where reminiscence and missing details complement each other, creating a new reality. Remembrance is an ability to store, preserve, and recall experiences and skills. Changes and loss of this competence can occur in a natural way as time goes by or as a result of cerebral neurodegenerative changes. This irreversible process leads to the subject of identity, recollection, and existence. Who are we without our memories, our experiences, and the recognition of our environment? How can we perceive the world if we lose the knowledge in which we clearly recognize and understand the reality around us?
The pictures attempt to capture the invisible by reflecting on different stages of these degradations. Over time, subjective retrospections are unstoppably transforming, damaging and vanishing like the photographs under chemical reactions. In this personal reality, time and memory distort emotions in such a way that human traits are slowly replaced by colors and shapes and the person seen in the picture gradually becomes more and more like an abstraction. The resulting experimental images push the boundaries of instant photography through various manual interventions. During the lengthy processes, different materials and fluids were injected between the layers of traditional polaroid photographs to create a peculiar universe, thus the images become the reflections of distant memories and ever-changing emotions.
Dora Kontha (1987, Budapest), she completed her studies in 2014 at the School of Design and Technology in Copenhagen, majoring in Multimedia Design, and has been living in Denmark ever since. Her work focuses on inner and outer landscapes involving various analogue processes and experimental techniques. While investigating the artistic and technical possibilities of film photography, her photographs evolve towards inner journeys, the visual translation of emotions and abstract representation of actual places. Dora’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries and featured in international publications. After her highly successful exhibition DREAMLAND, presented in 2018, her exhibition SOULSCAPES is her second solo appearance at TOBE Gallery.
The exhibition is part of the official program of the Hungarian Month of Photography FOTÓHÓNAP 2021.
Dora Kontha : Soulscapes
30 November – 23 December 2021
TOBE Gallery
1088 Budapest, Bródy Sándor u. 36.
Budapest
