SUBMISSION BY VIVIANA ILLANES
Ever since I first learned how to use film, I’ve always favored it over digital. Film has a different texture to it than digital photos, with the limitation giving each photo more value. Creating more patience, more pleasure. I always wished to capture that moment for that memory. I could capture a specific time in a million different ways, but I choose that exact way. Sometimes I feel so much love in a certain instance and I don’t want to forget it. Sometimes I feel so much disappointment and I don’t want to forget it. I’ll find myself looking at film rolls that have been sitting in a drawer for years and for a split second, I feel it.
I feel that love or that sorrow. Whatever feeling it may be I want to feel it whole.
Last year, I decided to move away from home and into Spain. The unfamiliarity of it all was the most frightening, and the distance between me and my family was crushing at times. Vitally, in the midst of feeling lost and alone, I found a human I’ve never related to more. Although Tiko was raised in the opposite side of the world, and although she had undergone distinctly opposite problems as mine, we became one. She was one of those memories I didn’t want to forget. The following are some photographs of our last weeks together.
Summertime, Barcelona Beach
Tinatin, El Lago
Primavera Sound
Spanish Warmth
Piccola Roma
In Bloom
Luxembourg
Tinatin
Infinite San Miguel
Returning to the states meant a range of emotion for me. On one hand, I had come back to the warm love I’ve been used to my whole life. On the other, I had to say goodbye to a sister who hugged my heart with hers for an entire year. And who is now standing on the opposite side of the earth indefinitely.
It conclusively brings me back to the purpose of the photo, love recall, and it works. This next batch of photos is what came of my return, and I’m still building on it. In the future, I’ll use these Miami photos as the love recall.
Art Basel
Samantha
Landscape Escape
Wet Gleams
Arena
A Sight To Behold
Mikey
Light Lies
Disappear Quickly
Ready With Nowhere To Go
Diner Date
I Want To Hold Onto What Is Real
All photos and text provided as a submission by Viviana.
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