by Hayley Ishihara
Mariela Sancari, originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, is a photographer based in Mexico City since 1997. Her work tells a personal narrative of her father's death and the growing relationship with her twin sister as they deal with the grief together. Along with a very strong narrative, her work also ties in the thin line between memory and fiction.
Her biggest project, Moises, all began because of her father's suicide. When he committed suicide, Sancari wasn't allowed to see his body and a little part of her never believed that he had ever actually died. For this series, she sent out a want ad with a photo of her father requesting men in their 70s that resembled him in one way or another. She photographed these men, sometimes in her father's clothing, to finally create a combination of beautiful prints, an installation as well as a book.
Sancari's website is clean and fairly minimalist. Unfortunately though, it is not very user friendly. The links on the left side are pretty stressful to look at because each link has sub-links underneath the main link, however, the main link isn't larger in size or bold so when a link is clicked, quite a few sub-links appear and it's hard to look at. It's also unfortunate because some of the images don't load when trying to page through her series.
I really enjoy Sancari's work. I found her approach to this project very interesting. Since she hadn't seen her father's dead body, she seemed to think that he could have been found in a coffee shop across the world reading the daily newspaper. This was her way of connecting with her father, even if it was just a man that shared his nose or a dimple when he smiled.
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