Lorena Guillen Vaschetti, artist-photographer

Confronted with a series of intriguing family pictures, Vaschetti explores the difference between personal memory, documents of history, and the silence between them.

“My mother and I are the only members left of a big Italian family. Convinced that she was lifting the heavy weight of the family past off my shoulders, she called me to let me know that she had thrown away all the family slides: It happened already, she said.”

The project historia, memoria y silencios is an unusual exploration of personal history and power through family photography–what the photographs reveal and what is hidden. In 2009, Lorena’s mother threw away all the family slides to protect her daughter from the family history. Lorena was able to recover only one box from the many that her mother had discarded. She re-photographed the contents from her perspective, choosing to leave the slides that were wrapped in packages unopened.

She writes: “Chronological time, viewed as a series of equal parts ordered one after the other, is, for me, extremely limited because it doesn’t take into consideration the depth or the intensity of an instant. While some moments are empty and barren, others bloom with meaning and emotion. For me photography is a medium that allows me to leave the finite and connect with the infinite present.”

Bio: Lorena Guillen Vaschetti was born in Rosario, Argentina in 1974. She has lived and worked in Buenos Aires, with the exception of 2001 and 2006 when she was based in New York. She studied Anthropology and Architecture and taught Habitat Theory at the University of Buenos Aires before committing to photography. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and has been exhibited in solo and group shows throughout Latin America, the United States and Europe. Her pieces are included in a number of public and private collections.
Her first monograph, Historia, memoria y silencios (Schilt 2011), published in Italian, English and Spanish was awarded as one best book of the year by PDN and Photo España 2012.