1983-84

Years before starting his project in 1980, I accompanied a friend who was in charge of an insurance company collecting monthly money for people’s burial, a common practice at that time for poorer people. The regular access to many different homes made a strong impression upon me and with this in mind, I began to take photos of dilapidated houses, barren backyards, and crumbling firewalls, which hadn’t seen paint for many years, occasionally with the presence of inhabitants.

Often the photographs appear like scenery for the theatre or a film, as if the actors had just left or eventually might appear. But the absence of people never feels strange or alien as they are always present in symbolic visual elements. The fidelity of large format photography allows the eye to wander around the image and discover minute details