In Recycle, Anna Pantelia converted old archived photos into storytelling images, experimenting with memory and the links between places, people and time.
“As a documentary photographer I believe that photography should tell or create a story. There are millions of photographers out there who take amazing photos, but the question is if these photos matter. Since I was young I was taking photos of beautiful sceneries or well-composed photos of buildings, however I couldn’t find a way to use them in order to serve a purpose; they were therefore useless for me. Some years later, looking back at my archive, I felt I have to either do something with these photos or to bin them. This is what we actually do with many objects we have stored at home. And that is what I did. The project is called Recycle because it’s an effort to find a way to convert something useless to something useful. In photography, everything should serve a purpose. Every photograph should reply to the question ‘So, what?’. This project was an experiment on how memory works, the connection between places you have lived in and the people you’ve had in your life in that specific time and space. It is a game about how the urban landscape can coexist with a portrait within your mind and create an interesting visual effect, as the stability of buildings is combined with the naturalness of portraits of people.”
