Libro de fantasmas - Tanja Smit

Libro de Fantasmas/Book of ghosts

Edited by Nau Coclea in 2006. Edition: 500 copies. Production and design: Tanja Smit. Design cover and text: Bis].

In the fall of 2005 Tanja Smit lived for a month as artist in residence in Nau Côclea, Catalunya, Spain. The centre is situated in the countryside, at a quarter of an hour’s distance from the nearby village. Her main companions were a dog and two cats. The rest of the world reached her through the newspaper which she went to seek in the village daily. Perfect conditions to welcome some ghosts she wanted to get to know better. She invited them and they came. They inspired her to draw and make photographs to reposition herself in the world. Point of departure was that particular moment and place; the here and now. But she found herself confronted with three different realities: firstly her direct environment; secondly that of the newspaper and, thirdly, no less intrusive, that of her own person with it’s baggage. She decided to chose an appropriate and distinct medium for each reality, but allowed along the way a free flow of the three realities in each image. The intimate chronology of a book was the form in which the final union would take shape. The selection and order of the images happened later, at some distance from the initial experience. With the book she has tried to compose a walk like those she used to make around Coclea. A sequence in which you are invited to walk with ghosts.