The Source of Light
The Source of Light is a video work structured around three movements exploring identity, perception, and cultural memory. Using pinhole camera images and a poem by Lucian Blaga spoken in Romanian and translated in English, the work examines how meaning shifts through language and image. It resists resolution, remaining within ambiguity and uncertainty.The video began with two images I developed using the pinhole camera. They carried a haunting presence, as if a story was already inside them - one I couldn’t control, only reveal.
The second movement turns to questioning: What do you see? What can you hear? What can you touch? It unsettles the viewer’s sense of certainty, inviting them to confront their own perception and the instability of meaning.
The work unfolds across three layers. The first is the biography of the portrait: a personal exploration of identity, belonging, and cultural memory. Using a poem by Lucian Blaga, Izvorul noptii (The Source of the Night), recited by the character, it creates a bridge into the unknown, where night becomes both origin and mystery.
The final part is a reflection on the image itself and the paradox between focus and blur, visibility and concealment, knowing and not knowing. It lingers in contradiction, exploring how the desire for clarity often dissolves into fragmentation, especially within an overstimulated, information- and image-saturated world.
Visually and rhythmically, it draws me to the poetic stillness of Chris Marker’s La Jetée, where images hold memory and silence. As Tarkovsky once said, “Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal.”
This longing for meaning, for coherence, runs beneath the work. Yet the video resists resolution. It doesn’t aim to answer but to dwell in ambiguity, letting the images tell their own story.