In the beginning, the intimate sphere. And then a community of circles before the eyes. So much roundness formed a thread of beads, and the essay proceeded in lines where each photograph called upon met the choice of meaning to make meaning exist. By displacing the individuality of the photographs, giving them to the opening, a story of reciprocal animation occurred, where the breath of one extends into another.
The circles desire to release these bubbles skyward. The river waters the flower beds and wants to fill the chasm of the father’s scar. Dust and light, in some hands, can make honey. The tree is a tree in the air. The staircase elevates the child. The things are alive and dreaming us. This essay seeks to imagine its dreams, to venture an invention.
"Where does the tree end and the rest of the world begin?" embarks on a journey through everyday life, through intimacy with things, inviting contemplation of the extraordinary found in the commonplace, using imagination as a pathway to universes created when one photograph joins another, and another, and another. Structured in polyptychs always in sets of four, alluding to the lyricism of sonnet stanzas, where the narrative and its rhythm unfold within a poetic form of meter. Structured in polyptychs always in sets of four, alluding to the lyricism of sonnet stanzas, where the narrative and its rhythm unfold within a poetic form of meter.
The series comprises 32 polyptychs and was developed between the years 2022 and 2023, supported by analog photography using films in 135 and 120 formats.
Author biography
Daniela Balestrin is a visual artist who, since 2020, has been developing a practice that intersects photography, writing, and analog and experimental photographic processes. Drawing from personal experiences and everyday life, she creates narratives that weave together memory and fiction, image and word. She works with photographic series, video, objects, and artist’s books. She was selected for the Nova Fotografia Prize 2024 at the Museu da Imagem e do Som, São Paulo, and was shortlisted for the Sony World Photography Awards 2024 in the Professional Creative category. In 2023, she received the Non-Professional Analog Photographer of the Year award from the IPA – International Photography Awards and was a finalist for Discovery of the Year at the Lucie Awards. Her work has been included in group exhibitions in several countries and, in 2024, she held her first solo exhibition at the Museu da Imagem e do Som, São Paulo.