Day's With My Father is the set of images by Phillip Toledano that follows the journey of his Father's short term memory loss and how he deals with it after his Mother died. Phillip writes "My Mum died suddenly on September 4th, 2006. After she died, I realised how much she'd been shielding me from my father's mental state. He doesn't have alzeimers, but he has no short-term memory, and is often lost. I took him to the funeral, but when we got home, he kept asking me every 15 minutes where my mother was. I had to explain over and over again that she had died. This was shocking news to him. Why had no-one told him? Why hadn't I taken him to the funeral? Why hadn't he visited her in the hospital? He had no memory of these events. After a while, I realised I couldn't keep telling him that his wife had died. He didn't remember, and it was killing both of us, to constantly re-live her death. I decided to tell him she'd gone to Paris, to take care of her brother, who was sick. And thats where she is now. This is a journal. An ongoing record of my father, and our relationship. For whatever days we have left together."
"I asked my father to look in the mirror, while I took his photograph. Now, you have to realise my Dad was very handsome when he was young. When people talk about 'Film star handsome', well, that was my Dad. In fact, he WAS a film star (of sorts), in Hollywood, during the 1930's. So when he looks in the mirror, he sees a man ravaged, a man no longer beautiful, and that upsets him deeply. You see, he's still vain at 98, in fact, his vanity can be quite extraordinary. I tried to take him to the doctor a few months ago, but on the way out, he caught a glimpse of himself in the hall mirror. He was so horrified with his appearance, that he refused to leave the house until I found a 'black pencil' to dye his white hair with."
The above two photographs are the ones that I have found most inspirational. The top one is his father and mother together, I presume from a previous photographic set he produced. It shows the love between them and represents how much it must have hurt and upset him every time Toledano was to repeat the news about his wife's death. The bottom photograph refers to the paragraph I have cited from Toledano's website (www.dayswithmyfather.com), which refers to him vanity and how it upsets him that he is no longer "handsome".
"My father often tells me he wants to die.
He says its time for him to go, thats he's been around too long. It's odd, because part of me wants him to go too. This is no life for him, living in the twilight of half memories. But he is the only really close family I have left."
I love the style of the first image, due to the fact that the light is covering half of his face, maybe relating to the fact that half of his memory is hidden. It could also be referring to the lack of a 'bright' future he has, a kind of opposite meaning. The photograph at the bottom has a bright and warm glow, but means the complete opposite. The photograph refers to the conversation had been Toledano and his father about his wish to die, which obviously is a negative and bleak conversation to be had. You can clearly see the worry and anguish in his eyes, and it saddens me as a viewer to see someone this way, although I have no emotional connection with them.
http://www.dayswithmyfather.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment