Faculty of Art

Photography

Ernesto Cabral de Luna

Palimpsest Passaporte - Diptych

Archival Scans - Pasaporte Ordinario - One Week in Canada, Fall 1980Utilizing my abuela and mom's shared passport, take free reign in rearranging the stamps, signatures and bureaucratic requirements in this identification document. I treat the seam of the passport that joins the pages together as a makeshift border from which the stamps, photos and signatures are free to cross without constraints.

““A falta de pan, tortillas” is a Mexican refran meaning: adapt to a situation despite wishing for an alternative. For immigrants, this summarizes the mindset required to start a new life in a foreign environment. This body of work is a visual rendition of my family’s journey as immigrants by way of retrieving, appropriating, distorting and repurposing archived identification documents and family photographs. A visual and conceptual trespassing of history and memory, manipulating personal records and expired identification documents allows me to reject and ignore colonial classification systems and bureaucratic procedures. Exploring the relationship between identification and identity - within their new context, there are no complicated administrative procedures required for the existence or validation of these images. The absence, manipulation and erasure of information within this work echoes aspects of life that are (in)voluntarily left behind through the processes of immigration. I am grateful for the people these images represent, for the culture and memories that they preserved, however fragmented, and all the different types of dust these photographs collected.”