Sayuri Ichida, Absentee #213 (2021) and #181 (2020)
review

A space for us to meet again. 9 photographers dealing with loss and grief.

To take photographs of a loved one who may soon leave us, document personal struggles with grief, or work with archival pictures of lost parents can be a profoundly personal substitute for the company of our beloved, helping us come to terms with a changed reality.

“(…) our complete collapse when death has struck down someone whom we love – a parent or a partner in marriage, a brother or sister, a child or a close friend. Our hopes, our desires and our pleasures lie in the grave with him, we will not be consoled, we will not fill the lost one’s place.” 

Sigmund Freud (Thoughts for the Times on War and Death, 1915)

The medium of photography is intimately intertwined with the concept of death. According to Susan Sontag, “All photographs are memento mori”. While Roland Barthes devoted much thought to the relationship between photography and loss in Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1980), explaining why working with this medium can be so emotionally charged with the reflection as “a photograph of a dead person comes and touches me like the delayed rays of a star”. When a person sees a portrait of a loved one, such a “photograph allows us to remember something we could not see”, as said by a Polish photographer, Marianna Michałowska. It sends us on a journey through time and space, putting us in the shoes of the photographer who was there at the time. 

It allows us to create a safe shell and hide in it. It can become a powerful way to say goodbye and achieve symbolic closure.

At the same time, creativity is a valuable therapeutic tool. Creating art can help you through the different stages of grief. Working on a photography project related to the deceased helps us process the loss because it provides time to reflect on the loved one and, at the same time, distracts us. It allows us to create a safe shell and hide in it. It can become a powerful way to say goodbye and achieve symbolic closure.

Artists use different strategies to process the piercing pain, to alleviate the overwhelming feeling of loneliness, or to create the illusion of meeting or touching the person who is gone. The latter motif appears both in Polish photographer Karolina Jonderko’s project Self-portrait with my Mother and the series Ke Lefa Laka: her-story by South African artist Lebohang Kganye. Both work with their parents’ garments, trying to establish a connection through the physical object, each using their own artistic tools and aesthetics.

Karolina Jonderko, Holiday Clothes, from the Self-portrait with my Mother project, 2012.
Karolina Jonderko, Holiday Clothes, from the Self-portrait with my Mother project, 2012.
Karolina Jonderko, Sunday Best Clothes, from the Self-portrait with my Mother project, 2012
Karolina Jonderko, Sunday Best Clothes, from the Self-portrait with my Mother project, 2012

Karolina Jonderko decided to work with her mother’s clothes, posing in the same outfits she wore on specific occasions. Looking into old wardrobes and recognising familiar shirts and skirts, the artist remembered many forgotten memories from childhood. Touching the fabrics her mother wore may seem like a daunting task, but it has the potential to ignite a sense of connection. Each image in the series is accompanied by a caption that outlines the purpose of each outfit (such as “Holiday clothes”) and the memories the clothes evoke. The prints in the exhibition are human-sized, giving the impression of meeting a live person and prompting the question: how much of the daughter and how much of the mother is in each of these unusual self-portraits?

Ka 2-phisi yaka e pinky II, 2013, Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 42 x 29.7 cm, ©Lebohang Kganye, courtesy the Artist.
Ka 2-phisi yaka e pinky II, 2013, Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 42 x 29.7 cm, ©Lebohang Kganye, courtesy the Artist.
Re tantshetsa phaposing ya sekolo II, 2013, Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 42 x 29.7 cm ©Lebohang Kganye, courtesy the Artist
Re tantshetsa phaposing ya sekolo II, 2013, Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 42 x 29.7 cm ©Lebohang Kganye, courtesy the Artist
Habo Patience ka bokhathe II, 2013, Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 42 x 29.7 cm ©Lebohang Kganye, courtesy the Artist
Habo Patience ka bokhathe II, 2013, Inkjet print on cotton rag paper, 42 x 29.7 cm ©Lebohang Kganye, courtesy the Artist

Lebohang Kganye aimed to create a visual symbiosis with her mother by applying self-portraits to archival photographs. The idea came when the artist looked into family albums and realised that the clothes her mother had worn in the past still existed. She decided to make memories that would match her mother’s, hoping to create a new reality for them both to inhibit one that conquers time and space. With the help of her grandmother, Kganye found locations from archival photos, dressed in her mother’s clothes, and recreated her poses from 30 years ago. These new photographs were then inserted into the pictorial narrative of the past through digital photomontages. It is there that they can meet again.

Amy Parrish, from the Check the Mail for Her Letter project, 2020
Amy Parrish, from the Check the Mail for Her Letter project, 2020
Amy Parrish, from the Check the Mail for Her Letter project, 2020
Amy Parrish, from the Check the Mail for Her Letter project, 2020
Amy Parrish, from the Check the Mail for Her Letter project, 2020
Amy Parrish, from the Check the Mail for Her Letter project, 2020

Another creative artist who works with archival material is Amy Parrish, an American artist based in India. In her series Check the Mail for Her Letter, the artist explores the connections between loss, reality, and memory in the context of her grandmother’s dementia. Images taken from photo albums or made in the final years of her life are distorted with gouache and wax pencils to represent jumbled memories and fleeting moments. During their last meeting, while confusing the time and space, the grandmother suggested returning to the old house to check the mail. The broken communication gave rise to a visual project focused on the fragmented realities of memories.

Martin Kollar, from the "After" series
Martin Kollar, from the “After” series
Martin Kollar, from the "After" series
Martin Kollar, from the “After” series
Martin Kollar, from the "After" series
Martin Kollar, from the “After” series

In the series After, Slovak artist Martin Kollar processes the grief of losing his romantic and creative partner to suicide. He focuses on the concepts of “before” and “after” the event, a distinction that defines his changed life from that moment on. Working on the series was a long and difficult journey through trauma. It began with an inability to look at any memories of “before”, to obsessively digging into the photographic archive created during the travels devoted to the film Letopis, which they planned to make together. Now, from the perspective of “after”, the artist studies his changed perception of the collected images, finding new connections and meanings and trying to capture the essence of the change in reality caused by the unexpected loss.

Rafał Siderski, from the “Leave Stay” series .
Rafał Siderski, from the “Leave Stay” series .
Rafał Siderski, from the “Leave Stay” series .
Rafał Siderski, from the “Leave Stay” series .
Rafał Siderski, from the “Leave Stay” series .
Rafał Siderski, from the “Leave Stay” series .

The motivation behind Rafał Siderski’s Leave Stay project was a desire to meet his father, who has long since passed away. It is an attempt to get to know a parent, who went abroad and died when the author was a little boy. Siderski only remembers telephone conversations and his father’s voice from his earliest childhood. The project is published as an intimate book, where each chapter presents the visual story of the artist’s father from the perspective of another family member. The elements of the project are like pieces of a puzzle that the artist tries connecting to unravel the portrait of a lost parent. Siderski realises it is an undertaking doomed to failure, but it still allows him to get closer to the man on the other end of the line.

Sayuri Ichida, Absentee #213 (2021) and #181 (2020)
Sayuri Ichida, Absentee #213 (2021) and #181 (2020)
Sayuri Ichida, Absentee #171 (2020) and #172 (2020)
Sayuri Ichida, Absentee #171 (2020) and #172 (2020)
Sayuri Ichida, Absentee #256 (2021) and #207 (2021)
Sayuri Ichida, Absentee #256 (2021) and #207 (2021)

Sayuri Ichida, a Japanese artist based in the UK, explores the emotional state of loneliness associated with the loss of her mother many years earlier in the meditative and minimalist series Absentee. It took the photographer many years to come to terms with the trauma of losing a parent, a trauma that had long been blocked from the artist’s consciousness. The suppressed emotions revived during the anxiety caused by COVID-19, leading to a period of grief and intense contemplation of death. Staged photographs, with soft depictions of the naked body combined with the sharp edges of physical objects, hint at the fragility of life and the uncertainty of reality. The calm and balanced monochromatic images leave much room for interpretation and reflection.

Picture by Michal Adamski from the project I can't get through the chaos, year 2011 - 2012.
Picture by Michal Adamski from the project I can’t get through the chaos, year 2011 – 2012.
Picture by Michal Adamski from the project I can't get through the chaos, year 2011 - 2012.
Picture by Michal Adamski from the project I can’t get through the chaos, year 2011 – 2012.
Picture by Michal Adamski from the project I can't get through the chaos, year 2011 - 2012.
Picture by Michal Adamski from the project I can’t get through the chaos, year 2011 – 2012.

A different strategy is implemented in the project and the photo book I Can’t Get Through the Chaos by Polish artist Michał Adamski, who documented the traumatic events related to the loss of both parents in a short period. The direct and raw aesthetic of the project brings to mind dissociation (as if the task of dealing with the overwhelming reality was taken from the protagonist and assigned to the camera). The monochromatic images show death without romanticisation or embellishment. The story is published as a small book and begins with a portrait of the parents hugging, before diving into a dramatic journey of loss and grief, and ends with calm photographs of an empty house. The artist focused on the terrible chaos between what Martin Kollar would call “before” and “after”.

Alicja Dorbucka, from the I like you, I like you a lot project,
Alicja Dorbucka, from the I like you, I like you a lot project,
Alicja Dorbucka, from the I like you, I like you a lot project,
Alicja Dorbucka, from the I like you, I like you a lot project,
Alicja Dorbucka, from the I like you, I like you a lot project,
Alicja Dorbucka, from the I like you, I like you a lot project,

Alicja Dobrucka’s I like you, I like you a lot (2008-2018) is a long-term project dedicated to the artist’s 13-year-old brother, who died tragically in a river. The visual story begins during the family’s mourning and the events following the dramatic accident. At that time, as the artist states, “the camera became a protecting shield from the brutal reality in a helpless situation”. Later on, the project took on a different storytelling strategy, serving the artist as a tool to get to know her brother better – to discover his favourite places, meet his friends, and understand his passions. Accompanying the artists through the consecutive stages of grief, the work on the project was spread over a decade, resulting in a beautifully intimate photobook.

From The Boys by Rick Schatzberg, published by powerHouse Books (2020)
From The Boys by Rick Schatzberg, published by powerHouse Books (2020)
From The Boys by Rick Schatzberg, published by powerHouse Books (2020)
From The Boys by Rick Schatzberg, published by powerHouse Books (2020)
From The Boys by Rick Schatzberg, published by powerHouse Books (2020)
From The Boys by Rick Schatzberg, published by powerHouse Books (2020)

In The Boys, an American photographer Rick Schatzberg approaches mourning differently. After losing his two dearest friends, who had been part of his closest circle for many years, the artist decided to go through the grief not alone but together with the rest of the men. Deeply appreciating the luck of having a close, supportive group, he dedicated himself to celebrating what he still has, creating a visual memento for his friends. This universal visual story, combining archival photos, texts, and tender, intimate portraits, reveals the vulnerability of ageing men and touches on the universal theme of closeness and lasting human relationships despite the passage of time.

About The Author

Grazyna Siedlecka

Grażyna
Siedlecka

Founder of ‘Fresh From Poland’ — an independent platform for contemporary Polish photography. She works as a curator, picture editor, and writer. She has curated several group exhibitions and cooperated with festivals across the world.

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