Street Photography is, certainly, a snapshot of urban life observed in its daily facet and that includes all its aspects: irony, tragedy, unpredictability, cruelty and even beauty.
Alex Coghe - all rights reserved
REALITY REMADE (2011)
In 2011, I embarked on my Reality Remade work, an exploration that sought to illuminate the ephemeral nature of existence through photography. Using innovative techniques, I delved into the concept of creating ghosts, ethereal entities that linger between the realms of life and death. Employing an external flash triggered remotely, combined with deliberate camera movements of my Olympus Pen and slow shutter speeds, I infused my photographs with a sense of transience and spectral presence. This experimental approach allowed me to capture moments where the boundaries between the living and the departed blur, offering viewers a poignant reflection on the fleeting nature of our existence. It is Street Photography, but it includes a philosophical and metaphysical observation, it talks about life and death. They are not street photos for their own sake.
The themes explored in Reality Remade laid the foundation for deeper investigations into life, death, and cultural traditions, notably during my documentation work in Oaxaca during the Dia de Muertos celebrations. Here, amidst the vibrant rituals and honoring of ancestors, I further examined these concepts, enriching my artistic exploration with cultural insights and emotional resonance. After I released this project, an Italian photographer contacted me saying that he really appreciated my project and that he was going to copy the technique I used, later I was able to see how others adopted the same type of approach. I wasn't offended by this and I took it more as a recognition.
For me Reality Remade represents the real starting point of my proposal as a photographer, where I was able to show that Street Photography can be used to deal with important and certainly deeper themes than what we usually attribute to this type of photography.
