Another related project of Rein Jelle Terpstra is called Retracing (2013) and consists of a book and a analogue tripartite slide projector installation. For Retracing Rein Jelle works with people who are about to lose their eyesight. Terpstra asked them about images valuable to them. How do they want to remember these images and how could they do this? In a sense, he was looking over their shoulders to photograph the things they pointed out: the things they saw, but also the things they think they can still see or would like to see. All images were shot on Kodachrome diapositives in 2010. Besides being valued for its special colors and its sharpness, Kodachrome is known to last long. These images of light outlast a person’s memory, which after all only lasts one lifetime.
For the people Terpstra works with this is an urgent theme. For them, perception is no longer a given and has become a precious thing. Photography’s role of preserving images here becomes an ambivalent one. He’ll keep in touch with these people and a few years from now he’ll tell them about these photographs, I want to read them out loud as descriptive as possible, iconographically, so that hopefully by means of words the images will be retraced in their minds.