From top to bottom :
Berlin, 1995
Sarajevo, 1997
Vienne, 1995
Karabük, 1977
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22nd January - 7th April 2002
I have always been on the edge of nothing, living in non-time. Each little happiness becomes part of the past and each dream of the future already seems to be a memory. Only the sea and the voice of Leonard Cohen are part of the present. The rest is just projection, and I have learned to be wary of that.
Photography has made it possible for me to travel and to see the difference between the possible and the impossible. I can keep things without owning them, remember without fear of forgetting, survive instead of merely living. Above all I can know that everything has a story, every story has two versions, and each version has its own past.
I travel in Asia, Europe and the Arab world. In the banality of the everyday, I see traces of things that will bind me to them forever. I walk on the trash in Cairo and I witness the sublime, I look at the walls of Auschwitz and I feel the presence of something sacred, I stop in front of a Vienna shop window and I glimpse futility. I take everything from nothing.
I sometimes think of all this, buried in my memory. Alone in my hotel room, at night, I think about my fears, my mistakes, the faces of my parents, my friends, the women I have loved, my children, death, the alcoholism I have put behind me, my money problems.
When we seek the absolute, there is no peace.
I always end up thinking about the simplicity of a day filled with nothing. And that is enough for me. I have always been on the edge of nothing, and Leonard Cohen is till singing...
Paulo Nozolino
Porto, 22 November 2001
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