Mysterious Memories

Photographer Stefania Orfanidou is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Jaguar Sun’. To see Stefania’s body of work, click on any image.

“Our memories are dreams, the house of the past has become a great image, the image of the lost intimacy.“– Gaston Bachelard

Back to my childhood. Lost memories. Forgotten habits. I enter into the room. In the depths of its serenity, imprints of life are scattered around. Signs of absence. Somewhere there a penetrating glance is looking at me. I see my feelings reflected into his eyes. My trace of thought is getting lost in the past. The scent of jasmine overwhelms my memory, when I used to plant flowers in the garden as a kid. My mother in the kitchen; trying to surprise me with new flavors. My eyes get distracted by an imperceptible swaying of the curtain. The light’s refraction on the folds of the fabric gives an ambiguous sense of the inside and the outside. It is dark now. The strange shadow on the wall creates the impression of mysterious. I’m dreaming again. Back to the present, a naked body. A loved one. Chasing the unattainable; probably long ago gone. The image is getting blurred. My memory deceives me. Outside the room, ordinary objects in unexpected places. Familiar faces. Traces of human activity. An unfinished building. L’origine du monde, of Gustave Courbet. And somewhere there, me, waiting for the jaguar sun.