Death is universal but rarely seen. Or when we do, it is “somewhere else”: dramatic, war-torn, from a distant land. These photographs are an unveiled but poetic look at intimate human relations, tracing a personal experience of dying, loss, and grieving, seeing the last few months of life.
The project borrows from both documentary and narrative photographic approaches. Sometimes including self-portraits where the photographer and subject–me and my dad–intertwine, the images are based on unfolding real events. Made often without looking through the camera’s viewfinder, the picture is either framed spontaneously or is captured using a smartphone app that previews and takes the picture remotely to be as unobtrusive and intimate as possible.
The work is informed by cinema (Fassbinder, Antonioni) and Nineteenth-century painting (Hudson River School, Sargent), as well as the Swedish television show, “Scenes from a Marriage,” by Ingmar Bergman, made in the 70s.
The intent is to capture lyrical private moments that are normally unseen. The project started about four years ago but most images are from Fall, 2014. My father died on November 24, 2014.