The creative impulse behind Um Jardim Perfeito (A Flawless Garden) came from a confrontation with the material decay of found photographic slides. While walking through flea markets and charity shops, I stumbled across buckets and buckets, full of photographic slides left to dust and mould. Images that were originally designed to be viewed paired with a projector, and uncapable keep up with the modern forms of image consumption. Now, instead of being viewed in someone’s living-room, they were instead awaiting until time faded their existence.

 

However, rather than restoring their original function, my interest laid on what it meant to re-animate images that no longer belong to their time, and what happens when obsolescence is treated as material, instead of “failure”.

 

The decay intrinsic to photographic slides resonates with the life cycle of flowers: growth, fading, disappearance. Yet unlike nature, where decay implies transformation, the decay of images signals erasure. Through experiments with light passing across translucent slides, static photographs appear to bloom and wither. This animation does not revive what is lost but simulates the appearance of life. The film invites the viewer to inhabit this ambiguity, where preservation becomes inseparable from control, and where care sustains appearance while quietly denying loss.

 

In Um Jardim Perfeito, this animation does not revive what is lost but simulates vitality through optical means. The film invites the viewer to inhabit this ambiguity, where preservation becomes inseparable from control, and where care sustains appearance while quietly denying loss.