Being you

Coming from a point of my life when sudden change occurred, I just needed to escape from my own life, myself, everything I knew… Went to another city, where I knew nobody, had no habits, places to go to, people to hang out with. The life of a tourist bored me, so after a few days, I desperately wanted a life, a daily routine. Unable to make one in such a short period of time, I asked strangers to let me live their life. For a day or more, I slept in their bed, talked to their friends, did everything they did, and recorded myself doing so. Driven from my identity crisis, I suddenly transformed my usual documentary style of photography into something more conceptual and “performance-like”, in order to raise questions about identity, fact, fiction and representation. Not providing additional information about the people whose life I am living, I let the environment, behavior and actions provide information for the viewer to construct their identity. But then again, the only visible person in the photographs is myself, the author and subject at the same time. With this interplay between fact and fiction, I try to add a layer of confusion which blurs the line between my own personality and the one of the actual person. I also believe it brings the question “Who are these photographs about? The author or the people, whose life I am living?” Traveling from life to life, I felt close to these people, their daily life, their problems and dreams, but most of all I felt closer to myself. The project is ongoing.