HOME, THE REAL THING OF AN IMAGE

Matchbox

We learn at young age that photographs are images of real things. But the real things of images continue to live on, for some time, at least. In Montreal, I live with images of Sarajevo at all times: some are just a tap away on my phone, some stare back at me from prints I have scattered around our home and in my studio, and some are neatly arranged in family photo albums. Some pretend to be memories, and some have nested themselves deep in my subliminal self only to awaken and take hold at unexpected moments.

So when I disembark from a plane that has carried me across the ocean, and find myself in Sarajevo, I feel as if I’ve just inserted myself into the real thing of those images that haunt me when in Montreal. And with each visit that feeling gets more agreeable and thoughts of living, once again, in the real thing become increasingly seductive.

The apartment building nicknamed Šibica (Matchbox) dominates the view from the home of my previous self. These photographs were taken during my numerous visits to Sarajevo, the city that had been my home for some thirty years, before my wife, our son and I left in 1998.

With each visit, bewilderment overwhelms me, for what I foresee there, in Sarajevo and Bosnia, is what I remember.

Exhibited: Patrick Mikhail gallery, Montreal, 2017