The fourth wall responds to the desire to explore the physical dimension of the photographic object to find some answers regarding the functioning of the family photographs as psychological territory: how do photographs mediate our family relationships? How do they intervene in our links in our understanding of family ties?

Heeding to the mediation operated by the camera, the process has consisted of penetrate the image, immersing into it, to discover from there the opening to spaces reflection regarding both the family scope (in the gestaltic and relational senses) and the multiples temporalities of the image. In this sense, it points to another way of understanding the photographic event that goes beyond the shooting of the photographer (in the ontological sense suggested by Ariella Azoulay).

To photograph placing the camera “inside” the images, responds to the interest of altering the established order’s hierarchy regarding what supposedly gives it sense, and it also raises the possibility of attending to the blind spots of photography, that which usually escapes the gaze. To refine our gaze towards the seemingly secondary information produced by a picture, significantly dilutes the barrier which keeps us as external viewers.

The fourth wall incites us to relate to the image in all its phenomenological dimension. Therefore, this project allows us to reflect about to what extent it is possible to expand the way we relate to the family album and, by extension, any image with which we are linked to.

All images ©Diego Ballestrasse