Traces Within
Eva Voutsaki

I walk through this limited time given to me, named life. And in this transitory period I try to enlighten all my fears, my emotions and desires. My camera travels with me into this symbolic voyage of nocturnal light; from darkness to light and then back again. The photographs: seascapes under the full moon, animals, lonely women and men- form an anecdote diary with spontaneous and accidental images that enable the viewer to travel smoothly and secretly into their own memories. The outer reality is transformed into a stream of dislocated and ambiguous images. I try to re-mythologize and re-invent myself.
Intuition is my only guide and the traces are always to be found within me, in my early memories, my dreams and nightmares.

Text by Vanessa Winship :

She told me she was the daughter of a farmer from an Island I visited a long time ago.

Sometimes meetings are short, intense, sometimes they last a lifetime.

What is it to be invited into a diary, to be offered a key to unlock what lies within? Long memories triggered by each lived moment, if shared, to know and understand that we are not alone. Sometimes we know where and when.
Her silent footsteps tread upon a shabby red carpet. She scans what lies before her, stopping just long enough to make a single frame and move on.

With tenderness she looks up to take in a string of fragile paper lanterns along a corridor we don’t know where it’s leading. Always walking.

What is it to know joy on seeing the free movement of the figure as it glides so effortlessly through water, sound muted by its vast expanse that surrounds and supports it? Only once does the figure come up for air.

What is it to appreciate the sensation of a retreating tide? To silently observe a solitary figure who seems feeling and measuring the air.

Who is the woman who patiently waits for her to catch up, catch up at the pace of the human heart?

Always walking.

What is it to feel the sensation of mist as she steps upon the earth so close behind her sheep, or to see her own breath as she moves long a car-less snow-covered road?

Along these tracks and pathway there’s always light.

Sometimes a flood of artificial light that renders expressionless the figures that move within it.
A dog instinctively slips into the shadows. But more often it’s the light cast by the moon, or the light when day becomes night or night day.

She follows those figures, first at proximity, and then a little further away, less sure, still she stays, and still she follows.

These are moments of a certain kind of solitude that still manage to find a connectedness.

Always walking always walking.

About the book:

A trifold book of three booklets stitched on a concertina cover which allows for the book to be opened out in to one long strip.
The format for Traces Within was based on the idea of drifting through memories, the intention was to create a book with no obvious beginning or end and allow the viewer to drift through the photos.
Embossed title on cover.Book opens to 21 x 88.8 cm. Printspeed offset paper, 140 gsm for the inner pages and 300 gsm for the cover.Printed on offset Lithoprint by Pureprint printers using vegetable based inks.
The photos contained in the three different sections can be viewed alongside each other allowing 2,197 possible combinations of images (thirteen to the 3rd power).
Self-published and hand bound by Eva Voutsaki
​Book design by Emily Macaulay
Writing by Vanessa Winship

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