fotographie, 2010
One of my favorite qualities of a photograph is the ability to re-access a moment that has come before, to share the past with the present. On occasion I enjoy searching through collections of old photographs at my parents' house, they seem to hold some secret to my childhood and my origin. One time I came over some images that I feel probably have not seen light for some time, as the box they were in was suffering from a rather thick layer of dust. The dust blown back, like a scene from an adventure film, I entered the box, excited about the treasures that awaited me. It seemed on this occasion the images were from my parents youth up until maybe their mid twenties. The images took on the charms of photographs of that age, small black and white, mostly self printed in a make-shift darkroom. I searched with great delight through the box, taking aside images that I deemed worthy of secondary study.

From these images I found four rather small [about 2 inch square], black and white images. They appeared to be landscapes; the first was of a large building resembling a large American college, two more seemed to be of Airport exteriors, both of which had large planes that took up most of the focus of the images and the third appeared to be a Bavarian street. All of which individually would perhaps of not raised many questions, however together they became quite the enigma. Why would one of my parents be taking images of these scenes? To be more precise how could this of come about? I then started to question the angle of the photographs all of which were taken from a high angle looking down on each scene. How could this be so? Were they taken from a plane, a large hill? What was I really seeing in these images? After further study I started to notice that the people that appeared in the images were not at the right perspective, they were giant and some of the trees as well could not appear smaller in the foreground than they were in the background. It was then there, available to me, the answer was the fact that these were miniatures. I had been viewing a model village as if it were a real one and if it wasn't for the clues I would never of known. After speaking with my mother it became absolutely apparent that I had been tricked by my mother into seeing something in a different way and not only my mother, but my mother at the age of about ten on a school trip to Holland where she visited this model village. How strange it was to be tricked or deceived so long after the actual event.