Tineidae

The Tineidae series (the name is taken from the Latin word for the moth family) arises out of the long-term exposure of a number of photographs from the  J.R. Plaza Archive to the action of what are commonly called clothes moths. According to the dictionary definition, the term “moth” can be applied “to anything that destroys something slowly and senselessly”, which would be the case of time itself. Like with our memories, photographs tend to fade out. A printed photograph, once attacked by light or humidity, “it fades, weakens, vanishes; there is nothing left to do but throw it away”, says Roland Barthes. This is even more dramatic if we think that photographs often replace memories, even though in essence they are not memories at all, working in fact as counter-memories that block out the original recollection. Is it not frequent enough that a photograph comes to replace the memory we could have of a certain event (if we have one at all: some memories don’t even get the chance to form as such, which is when photographs come into play)? The idea we have of a given moment in life (here the artist chooses particularly pleasant circumstances) depended entirely on this image that is now full of holes. It is as if the purpose of the moth were to remind us that what we see has been irremediably left behind.