The paper Airplane
I used to create paper airplanes, during my childhood in Albania. I would throw them from the window of my school, through the olive tree branches; wanted to see how far would they fly. The airplanes embodied freedom to me at that time, not only because flying was a forbidden dream under the oppressive dictatorship of Albania, but mostly because this light, little paper flight, defied the laws of nature. It flew freely on a different route, every time.
In this triptych of photography, I have created a paper airplane and launched it, in the first frame. The second frame depicts the paper airplane as it traveled through space. The third frame shows the image blending in space, as it metamorphoses into space itself.
To preserve the childish concept of the airplane as a “sky-ish thing”, I used a sky-printed picture to build it. Purposefully, there is no landing destination on the third frame. I ignore the arrival destination, as to ignore that moment, which has become a moment of “applause,” nowadays, and the most important anticipation that one could have from traveling with airplanes.