Eva Tordera Nuño artist and researcher

Nowadays, photography is present in most of the crucial moments of our lives. This is because of our perception of the photographic media as a documentary tool. We use it to preserve the memories, in analogue or digital format, as a small piece that will transport us to the past, whenever we want. The function that we confer to photography is objective; we believe that something has happened and how it happened because we have a picture that proves it. Despite we know that photography is a subjective media that can be manipulated by any means. 

 

Identity is a complicated concept that we tend to confuse with personality. It isn't easy to define so that it would correspond to most people's ideas. It is not easy to explain, but we all know that we have one, which distinguishes us from the rest of the human beings. It is a group of details that builds ourselves as we are unquestionably, and if we would remove some of it would change us.

 

When photography and identity met, I found myself in front of a big question mark: how can identity be photographed? Then I decided to recognise in myself the small elements that make me unique and distinguish me from the rest of the people. These features were 10: where do I come from, where I am now, my family, my profession, and my ideas, my debilities, my hobbies, my addictions, relationships and idols. Afterwards, I decided I did not want to talk just about myself, but I wanted to create a space in which different female identities would meet and relate to each other. This way, we could study and analyse the identity, somehow. Currently, the work shows 27 female identities (from all around the world and different ages) through pictures. 

 

Photography as a medium is critical in this work because of its documentary position -identities exist because we can photograph them. The result is an extensive mosaic that offers at first glance a general view of some of the features that might be common on the female identity. Then, if we look carefully, we can go through each identity and discover which parts are or are not essential to that specific woman. The conclusion always depends on the eyes of the beholder.