Joachim Fleinert / The Things Our Ancestors Didn’t Know

I am a collector with an interest in our cultural and historical understanding of our ancestors. My collection consists of photographs found at flea markets, antique stores and charity shops. They all portray anonymous people and are taken by unknown photographers

With a special interest in glass negatives from the beginning of 20th century I experiment with these fragile objects in different variations and forms. By trying to understand their values, those who once were in the pictures and the story they give us, I am ending up asking the question: do we really know what we are looking at and why?

The Things Our Ancestors Didn’t Know

Sometimes the content of an image is not so important, it is more how we read them that makes the picture.

We are constantly bombarded of information and signals in an every day basis, whenever we are looking at a picture in a newspaper, an advert in a public space or in a simple memory in a photo album. In facts most of the cases we are completely unaware of the small details an image may contains. However we are raised to question these signals we read and in different ways, all depending of the world where our own world is moving from. Better described as an extra invisible layer of self-knowledge.

This series of images is an attempt to recreate fragments of this invisible layer. Because of my Danish background the text appears in Danish and with my dreaming mindset, I try to raise the question: is there really a correct way of understanding a picture?

Courtesy of the artist

Photographs © Joachim Fleinert

Posted by Francesca Marcaccio