As Roland Barthes said in Camera Lucida, : "The photograph does not necessarily say what is no longer, but only and for certain what has been" (85).
In 2001, I crossed the Atlantic ocean for the first time to discover the Caribbean. Left the West for the East. From the waves of time Uvero Alto and smiles of the Dominican people have inspired me to document every moment moment until today. I have traveled and lived in the batey of Uvero Alto, which does longer exists except in the memories of its inhabitants and in the captured images.
"I have No where to go" resonated in the empty village after the 30th March 2007. Uvero Alto disappeared from the map as a village but appeared on the tourist map.
Walking along the seashore with children playing beside me ,picking up shells as a souvenir to bring to Europe. Shells, the symbol of the sea, carry sounds, silence and memories. They carry the stories of a people.
Inspired by the archive of my grand father form 1935, I have developed an interest for processes and reproduction in alternative image printing and processes beyond digital. Losing and rediscovering pictures is part of my practice.My files of Uvero Alto have been destroyed , lost and recreated in parts , like the families who used to live in this quiet beach. Digging through hundreds of pictures of the daily life of the people through contact sheets, scanned photos, scanned digital photos, original negatives or digital files.
Hand printed using acrylic lift.©Ingridguyon
I decided to print those photos in the objects found in the Alto Uvero such shells, stones and sand, to connect the past with the present, the West co the East, to revive the immortals to those moments, to celebrate forgotten people.
According to (AGFE 2005) Impacts of tourism, although positive coastal rural communities in the Dominican Republic, leave serious threat in the coastal zone due to privatization and the closure of the main access roads to the beaches and sea journeys creating refugees and increasing tourism.