The Sicilian Family

This work is part of a broader photographic research that avoids direct use of the camera and instead experiments with different digital techniques (from a screenshot of the computer monitor to the creation of alternative software). The Sicilian Family is composed of a series of digital photos which are the result of my attempt to literally write my memories inside of each photograph.
A year ago, I started to visit my relatives in Sicily and collect their old analogue photos, listening to dozens of stories about them along the way. I created an archive of images and memories: of love, childhood and friendships. Many of the photos show relatives who had died before I was born. I digitalized all of the photos by scanning them and then decided to open each one with Notepad (a simple text editor), transforming the photo into a text file. The pixels of the image were translated into alphanumeric ASCII code. This code is a non-intelligible sequence of characters that contains all the information required to recreate the image through an image viewing software. Using Notepad, I substituted a part of the ASCII code of each photograph with a story based on what I had come to learn about each person portrayed. The text is, in part, the memories that were passed down to me, and, in part, my own interpretation. I then saved the text as a JPG, forcing it to become an image once again. My alteration forces my memories to coexist with the image in an unforeseeable and new way.