Anna Vahitova. Marker

Whatever we touch already carries imprints left by someone, and every interaction becomes a direct or an indirect exchange of knowledge. Every one of us is involved in an intricate network of ties, intimate, social or industrial relations. When you interact with others, traces of that interaction may impact them, change their outlooks and even prompt new behaviour, obvious or imperceptible. These changes, be it our personal growth or our wounds, all come from our contacts with other people. Even a brand new item enters your life with traces left by the many who designed, manufactured, packed, sent, and sold it to you. The entire world is shrouded by a network of traces where we are all connected with each other. What we are is shaped by these relationships or by our resistance to them.
Tracers are markers and signs of life. Mediate traces stay inside of us, while the obvious ones are exposed by our bodies. Sometimes we evince our internal experiences through our body, marking it with symbols to preserve visual memory about these experiences, and thus making it both the originator, receptor, and communicator at the same time. Our traces may be left without us being aware of that or on the contrary as a result of our concious eagerness to register our presence in this world.
This project is my attempt to unveil these traces embracing the photography’s ability to expose unnoticed details, to turn the obscure into the obvious, and to give everyone an opportunity to think about the traces they leave behind.

Self-publish, 2014

Hard cover, 16x21 sm

Edition of 20 copies

English and Russian texts