Panni

2017

The title of the work is Panni, which in Italian means Clothes.
This series is about memories. I collected clothes from the back of my cabinet. Although I hadn’t worn them for years, I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away because they reminded me of so many memories—important, painful, bitter, joyful, and sweet—that had become too heavy to carry.
I asked my best friends—those who have literally stepped into my shoes—to wear those clothes, and I took their portraits in a place of their choice. My friends became the bearers of my memories. These portraits, where they are wearing my clothes, reveal the depth of our relationships.
I decided to give all the clothes to my friends, but before doing so, I wanted one last encounter with these garments that carried so many stories. I took a photograph of each item as a form of self-portrait.
These images represent a part of myself. The careful composition and deliberate choice of location aim to express my state of mind and feelings at the moment of shooting. Clothes significantly define our identity and impact our feelings, physically and emotionally, on many levels, making it possible to depict a self-portrait through them.
Some of my friends wrote accompanying texts, which, together with the portraits and photographs of the clothes, have been edited into a magazine. This project adopts a participatory approach and includes multiple perspectives in the final work.
All photographs were taken with an old second-hand Hasselblad 500C, which carries its own memories as well. They were shot on Kodak Portra 400 film and scanned without significant alteration.