Tres Primaveras Book

Tres primaveras is a photographic essay and the result of over a decade of artistic and academic research on photography in relation to personal, familial and collective memory and mourning processes. The text unfolds a complex relationship with archive images (public and personal) and photographic works developed in Canada, Argentina and Poland. Within a narrative that weaves through personal memoires, the text and photographs converse with underlying historical events of war, genocide, exile and human rights issues - from Russian pogroms in the beginning of the 20th century, through the Second World War and finally the last Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983).

The book develops the notion of photography as a dynamic personal and public form of memorial. Photography chronicles and embodies the transmitting of diasporic identity through generations. The chapters contemplate the various possible lives, timelines and constellations of a photograph, whether in a family album, an artist’s archive, a museum or a judicial trial. Furthermore, the book examines the act of photographing as a form of denunciation and resistance, it contemplates the surviving image as a sole witness. Lastly, these three chapters reflect on the stories of women and their endless commitment to justice and memory.

Photographs are ruins of what remains of our battlefields. Whether personal, familial or collective they are an integral part of our mourning and memory processes.