Ffotogallery, the national development agency for photography and lens-based media in Wales, is delighted to present the first solo exhibition in the UK by Daniel Blaufuks, one of Portugal’s most celebrated contemporary artists.

Daniel Blaufuks, whose work combines photography, video, sound and installation, is an artist fascinated by the processes of memory – how we construct meaning in our lives through the accrual of details and traces. For Blaufuks, memory is intrinsic to our notions of time, space and place and by definition to photography, literature and film, archives and documentation. Each object he photographs becomes a cue for something else, for some emotional relationship, for some reminiscence that might be important but somehow remains elusive, just outside our consciousness. The hand-written note, postcard, concert ticket, passport stamp, shopping receipt; as individual images they appear to have little significance and meaning, but presented in a series they encourage us to look for patterns and relationships, to build a coherent narrative from the shards and fragments of personal or collective memory.

Blaufuks is also interested in the methods by which we archive, store and retrieve information – our ability to remember. His photographic images of film canisters, cassette tapes, celluloid film strips and negatives remind us that as each analogue ‘memory container’ is superceded by new technological developments, our capacity to record data may increase exponentially, but something is also lost in the process. For Blaufuks, photography is more than simply a trigger for retrieving past memories. Photography is memory. From the act of photographing something new, or incorporating a found image in a work, new memories and associations are formed.

Works on Memory is co-curated by Filipa Oliveira and Ffotogallery Director David Drake. A new Ffotogallery publication Works on Memory will accompany the exhibition. Project supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.