I Documented One Year Of My Life Through Photographs I Took Each Day And Night

A bird’s year represents a selection of images taken from my personal photographic journey. The project started in 2014, on January, 1 and ended on December, 31. During this journey I took emblematic photographs for each of the 365 days and nights of the year.

The process was an artistic one, because of the continuous exploration of a photographic style that I can relate to as a visual artist. From a photographic point of view, the project was a difficult challenge. The environmental and lightning conditions – not always the best, finding the time to shoot and edit photos every day and every night, despite of the different moods I was going through, all made this process quite uncomfortable.

The superficiality I often find in my job, in fashion and commercial photography, made me wonder about the morality of art and its message. We are living in an almost virtual environment and we picture ourselves to one another in a way that rarely has something to do with reality, trying to fit with the standards imposed to us by the society we live in. Through a bird’s year I was searching a permanent dialogue between natural and artificial elements, between organic and rigorous geometrical forms.

But this has nothing to do with the main reason I started this project in the first place. The motivation behind it was my personal need, a therapeutic one, to create a visual documentary of an important year of my personal life.
The year started with an extremely difficult phase in my personal and professional life. Having to deal with the disease of my beloved childhood friend, while struggling with the stress of starting my own business as a young arts student.

The images are minimal square photographs, with a white border, representing everyday objects, places and people dear to me, that had the strongest impact on that particular day. Although I am an introvert, I started posting these images on social media, the title I chose being the only thing that betrayed my emotions.

As the days gone by, the project became more personal. I started taking pictures in my workspace, my personal space, my neighborhood and everywhere I went. The hardest moment and the breakpoint of that year came around the days of my friend’s death, as I remained by her side in the house, the emergency room, the hospital. She slowly lost her life, but never her dignity, and I slowly lost the last bit of my childhood. I hardly tried to document the void her passing left in my life. It was then when I knew I found the perfect name for my project – A bird’s year.
After that, I took a long break from work and everything I did and spent one month living on the mountain, with no internet connection, far from home. The project continued as I documented every day of that healing journey. By the time I came back, I defined my priorities and started dedicating more time to my passions, mainly photography and songwriting.

The project ended on the last day of the year, the contentment of taking it to an end was a unique moment for me. It became my dissertation project and my signature as a photographer. It celebrates imperfection and the unavoidable, but so important commonplace.