Daniel Djamo - The fat lamb from djamo on Vimeo.
The fat lamb / 2011
These videos ("Menu", "The fat lamb" and "3") are part of a larger project, named “Buni”, which is a journal of the last words. I started it in the middle of 2009. It’s decomposition, mental agony and self loss. This is not a documentation of death, but a mere projection of what really matters. The photos are trying to underline the immortality of the human experience with everything that surrounds him, their interior value, that is never forgotten or lost, becoming the legacy of those who are near to us, those who we love. “Buni” is not a two year study of degradation, but everyone’s story, even if it appears in rather different shapes, written or rewritten with more or less talent.
Buni raised me. Although we are not related, she was more than a mother to me. I started photographing her when I saw that she was in poor health. I felt I must do it. I couldn’t stay inert. In the summer of 2010 I felt that the photographic medium is poor, considering what I felt I would like to transmit to others. That is why I chose to continue what I felt I must do through video. It is obvious that a feeling cannot be transmitted in the sharpest, truly human and real form through the use of photography, film, or text. Nothing that is inside of us can be made VHS or DVD.
“Buni” can only offer photocopied images of a story distorted by our own memories, becoming a reflection of ourselves in deformed mirror.
Buni died at the end of 2011, one week before turning 82.
I was there for her (with my aunt, Liza) when things took a turn for the worst. I decided to document Buni first of all for my future children. I wanted to encapsulate whatever I could of herself. At first I took the photos as an amateur, without an artistic purpose (in early 2009, when I bought my first DSLR).
In early 2010, having started working on my Masters, I saw a project regarding death and disappearance of young Romanian artist Iana Badescu. Also, Bill Viola and Sophie Calle came to my attention. This is how I found out that art can talk about such matters.
After showing what I did to my coordinator, Ms. Roxana Trestioreanu, I was convinced to continue on working, and encouraged to focus on the moving image.