The Beginning of Everything

• Photographer
  Ximena Bares
• Prizes
  Bronze in People/Self-Portrait

How do we relate to our own solitude? Is our individual identity fragmented as a result of our interaction with everything around us? What is the return journey like after this fragmentation? Are we aware of everything we have intervened upon? The series you will see below does not seek to provide answers to all these questions, nor was it even conceived with that in mind. The only objective of this work has been to have fun building imaginary worlds in which to play with myself, enjoying my own solitude, the night and the nature that surrounds the house I live in.

Photography is a practice that allows me to play as if I were an eight-year-old with all the toys in the world within my reach. In that constant and inevitable play, reality becomes the basis for the creation of situations escaping that same reality by evoking dream-like, sometimes unsettling images. I am drawn to the world of dreams, to human psychology, to the exploration of the different identities we take on to protect ourselves from a menacing outside world and to how individuals relate to their own solitude. The rural environment in which I live, which is at the same time raw and overwhe