Pictures from Bed © Karla Hiraldo Voleau — *Pictures from Bed* © Karla Hiraldo Voleau

What is the inspiration behind your series Pictures From Bed?

This project debuted in 2017 and is still ongoing, evolving, growing … I find endless inspiration in personal memories and images of intimacy. Back then when I started it, I remember it was only a pretext to experiment with my printing techniques. Printing images of wrinkled bed sheets and skin on Japanese wrinkly paper made sense. With time it became more about the subject itself, and this collection of images of friends, family, lovers, or myself in bed, appeared to be the climax of intimacy, a concept that’s hard to grasp.

How did you conceptualize and develop these images? What sort of editing goes into the images after you’ve captured them?

With this particular project, it’s pretty easygoing. No performance, physical travel, interviews, or research. It’s only about the poetry, memories, and trying not to ruin my printer. I archive all my personal photos (digital, analog) by months and years, and I have it all since 2011. I scroll endlessly into 10 years of the past and create a collection of all the beds I’ve slept in.

What emotions do you evoke through your photos and how do you wish your audience to perceive them?
I always hope the viewer can use my images as an entry point into their own memories. I know that personally, watching stranger's recordings (pictures, notes, films) always gives me great comfort and inspiration.

Describe your creative process in one word.

Rush.

If you could teach a one-hour class on anything, what would it be?

Organizing. Ideas, plans, steps, dreams, stories, files, food, house … I can organize the hell of everything. Not so glamour, but practical!

What was the last book you read or film you saw that inspired you?

I’m currently reading a book titled ‘Nuit Espagnole’ (or ‘Spanish Night’) by writer Christophe Ono-Dit-Biot and contemporary artist Adel Abdemessed. The concept of the book is inspiring for storytelling, as often in Ono-Dit-Biot’s literature: he mixes fiction and auto-fiction, between the novel and the document.