Since 2005, Pascal Moraiz explores the passing of time and is interested in the marks it leaves on objects and places. He wants to be the witness of the “small” stories that the leftover can tell.
With «Rusty Games», he goes a step further, staging and lighting forgotten toys, unearthed at yard sales. He invents a new life for those toys, putting them in the spotlight again. Like a child he plays fantasy games (“let’s pretend...”) and develops for each toy specific scenarios which tell a story, therefor arousing nostalgia in the viewer who’s transported at the doorstep of his own childhood. This imaginary journey is rendered even more powerfully, thanks to the use of large format film photography that mixes shallow depth of field with crisp details and textures.
The choice of the large format film photography allows the perception of time relativity: it transports the viewer into the slowness and the stretching of time during the first years of one’s life.