parallax errors by tamara suarez porras

Issue 177

Ghosting and auras have disrupted my vision for the last decade, fundamentally impacting both how I see and how I relate to photography. It is difficult to perceive what is real and what is an emanation. “parallax errors” begins from its title: the perceived displacement of an object when viewed along two different sightlines (like a rangefinder camera works). Human eyes also see this way, but the brain normally renders the doubling invisible. One day, to me, the invisible became visible.          

These photographs are made on film as single exposures, with all “visual effects” achieved in-camera using physical interventions to lens optics. The viewfinder became a site for altered, unsettled, kaleidoscopic perception. As I struggled to express what my vision looked like and its disruptive impact, manipulating the camera’s sight to evoke my own was liberating.          

parallax errors also visualizes the simultaneous realities and truths, sometimes invisible, that compose understandings of self. When my vision changed, I also learned the identity of my biological father. Two sudden seismic shifts in my core. Suddenly another parallel storyline emerged: a doubling once invisible but always present. I received a small collection of photographs of and letters written by him; I rephotographed them using this altered sight to get closer to this stranger through the only material I had. In the series, images of the cosmos are analogized to access a similar way of knowing: celestial bodies can feel so familiar, yet they are also unreachable—still only known to us through photographs and text.  

tamara suarez porras (they/she) lives and works in Oakland, California.
tamarasuarezporras.com | @obviously_tma