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Born in 1963 in Liège.
Lives and works in Liège.
http://www.wix.com/willydelzoppo/humazooiques
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My name is Willy Del Zoppo, and I want to talk about the series entitled "Solipsistic Archives," which I'm showing at the MAMAC for the Biennial of Photography 2012.
First of all, I think it would be useful to clarify this rather cryptic title. Next it would be interesting to see what led me to take these photographs. Then, I would like to address the philosophical underpinnings of the series "Solipsistic archives." Finally, I will try to explain how this series fits in the general framework of Humazooïques, a term which I use to describe my work in general.
Let us first consider the meaning of the phrase "Solipsistic archives." Everyone knows what "archives" are: past documents that we can classify, archive, and index. As for the word solipsistic, it means that one speaks of oneself. Hence an autobiography is solipsistic. The "Solipsistic Archives" are thus archives that talk about me.
What are these archives that I propose to compile? They are photographs collected from family albums at flea markets. To date, I think I have about 40 from different periods and in different formats.
One could wonder why I jumped into this rescue business. It was perhaps because my own history lacks these archives. For many reasons, I have no family album, and I am not in the practice of taking snapshots.
I only have two photos of my youth: one passport photo from when I was ten years old and one class picture from when I was fifteen years old.
These few explanations can probably explain why I was attracted by the gleanings of family albums shipwrecked at flea markets. Often when I flip through these remnants of lives lost, my heart sinks. I cannot escape an overwhelming sense of nostalgia when I look at that preposterous, beautiful or poignant images that can sometimes contain histories of lives forgotten or denied.
Five years ago ago, I started to reshoot some of these witnesses of the past by placing them in a new context, which somehow gave them a new importance and truth. This truth, of course, is only mine, and the link the chosen image has with its new environment is as much a product of my sensitivity as my subjectivity: hence the title "Solipsistic Archives." Thus, I travelled from sea to mountain, from Liege to Venice, with a series of photo albums that touched me as much by their content as their form. This approach, in terms of a philosophy of photography and of the general thrust behind my work, is not trivial.
Let's see how it works: photo albums serve as witnesses of past life. While keeping alive its memory, they also remind us of an irrevocable loss. That is why when we leaf through a family album, we experience a strange nostalgia where the pleasure of revisiting what is no longer mixes with the knowledge that those days are long gone. Parenthetically, we can experience the same feeling when we visit a cemetery. While it remains within the conclave of the family, the family album allows for the steady flow of feelings, passions, surprises, and even denials sometimes, giving cohesion to the family unit. The family album thus summons the past to stimulate the present and to eventually build the future of the family. We can thus see that the album, while extremely personal and specific, contributes to personal and collective history because it also reflects ways of life, of dressing and of thinking …
But what happens when the album is in the middle of flea market trinkets?
All these lives frozen in time by photography become indecipherable because the witnesses to these images are absent or have disappeared. At most we can try to reconstruct a few fragments of their lives by analyzing the written materials accompanying the photos, but without any certitude as to their veracity. That is why the lost family album allows the one who takes the time to contemplate it to create imaginary films, scenarios, or lives for himself or herself. The pictures I reshot are thus my own emotional and artistic album.
In what way does this series fit into the framework of my work in general, which I remind you bears the generic term Humazooïques? First, we must know that Humazooïques is divided into three parts. De la nature des êtres ("On the Nature of Beings") is a compilation of portraits. De la nature des choses ("About the nature of things") is more about the inanimate, and finally De la nature de l’art ("On the Nature of Art") is a reflection on the ways and means of artistic creation through photography.
The characteristic feature of the solipsistic archives is that they can be part of all three categories. First, family photos are by definition portraits, and as such, they clearly belong to the nature of beings. However, a photograph is also an object, and, therefore, these personal witnesses of the past also fit in the series devoted to the nature of things. Finally, the photographs I have chosen speak to me through their obvious aesthetic qualities, whether voluntarily or accidentally, and they thus deserve to be integrated in the series devoted to the nature of art. To sum up, I would argue that the solipsistic archives are an exhilarating and vain attempt at building myself my own family album solely based on the criteria of the strange, the sublime in the Kantian sense of the word, and full solipsism. Whether the solipsistic archives reflect the ideals of the project of the Biennial, just remember the latter's subtitles: "Images of Love / Love of the Picture." What are the vast majority of family photos if not a representations of ideals of love that characterize our society? Therefore, based on the message they deliver, the shots in my photographs are images of love. Moreover, since my selection proceeded from spontaneous attraction and feelings of tenderness, it clearly obeys the second prompt, the one of the love I can feel for these images in the shape of an internal mirror.
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