“What exactly is nostalgia? The term “nostalgia” derives from the Greek words nostos (return) and algos (pain). Indicating that it is the suffering evoked by the desire to return to one’s place of origin. Origin can be many things, a place or a particular time in our history, or something not quite clear, but existing. If we stay connected to our own feelings of nostalgia without dramatizing but just being present, embracing them, then we can find ourselves leaving the horizontal time we usually live in, entering a vertical kind of time that leads us towards the reality of True Origin, to our truth, or simply back Home.
This is my experience, as it came out of this photographic ‘project’. In turn, these photos invite their spectator to the same process. By just meeting them (not analyzing, or trying to ‘understand’, or categorizing, or criticizing them, but being present & embracing whatever arises), synkinisis (pathos) can happen. Synkinisis is not an emotional expression; synkinisis is what is created when the soul acknowledges through the senses, in a manifestation of existence, one of its own qualities.”
This series was shot in Cuba by Haris Kakarouhas and received the 2003 European Publishers Award.
