imagined futures

Rafael Soldi

“I was born in Lima, Perú to a mother and father—themselves children of immigrants. I was aware of my queerness in an abstract sense from an early age. At school, the culture was toxic—the posturing of masculinity was paramount to surviving our teens. I was neither interested nor dexterous at this posturing, and knew early on that whatever society expected of me as a man, I was destined to disappoint. Whether this was true, or a projection of my own fears, I’ll never know—perhaps it was both. I imagined my future often, and it was always one starring me living in the shadows. In my teens I relocated to the US, where I never stopped thinking of the life I may have lived, had I never left.

Comprised of 50 seemingly identical self-portraits, Imagined Futures addresses a concern universal to most immigrants. How do we grieve the life we left behind in order to live this one? What do we do with these haunting visions and questions about the lives we left behind? For two years I used analog photo booths to capture the loss of imagined futures, bidding each farewell in a private ritual. Akin to a confessional, the booths are both witness and complicit in each performance—a small stage for a monumental performance that is private and public all at once. Releasing all formal control, each booth yields a unique image, transforming from a simple picture-making apparatus into a collaborator that makes a likeness of a body mourning in its belly.”
—Rafael Soldi