Robert Desjarlais
  • PHOTOGRAPHY
    • Photos in my lost hours
    • Seared with Reality
    • The Gambit
  • ANTHROPOLOGY
    • Counterplay
    • Sensory Biographies
    • Shelter Blues
    • Body and Emotion
    • Essays & Articles
  • BIO
  • REVIEWS AND PRESS
  • CONTACT
Photos in my lost hours.  A photographic memoir.

How does one photograph memories? I am interested in how photographs can reach toward a life irrevocably past but still resonant in a person's remembrances. In 1982-83 I lived in Besançon, France, and studied at the university there. Through the course of that year I learned French, made good friends, visited Paris, hitchhiked through Europe, and fell in love. I have long since lost touch with everyone I knew then. This past year I returned to Besançon after a thirty year absence. Re-exploring the town's streets and neighborhoods, I used the camera to reflect on the nature of memory, the passing of time, and the many turns of self and relations in life. I felt like a ghost, frequenting places that have meant much and in those places photographing vestiges of my past. Leaving Besançon, I retraced my steps as a traveler. I photographed movement, encounters with new lands and faces, and loneliness on the road. Together, the photographs capture the flux of time and the elusive tones of life, past or present. I am crafting the images into a photographic memoir, entitled "Photos in my lost hours."
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