How can you gather together
the thousand fragments
of each person?
George Seferis, the Greek poet asks at the beginning of his poem, Lost Worlds. It is a question that cannot be answered. Some moments will be illuminated, and some will slip into darkness. This project describes my elderly parents who emigrated from Greece in 1960 to Australia. But that is not what I am documenting.
This body of work is my attempt to somehow respond to the poet’s question, as I photograph my parents in a time of vulnerability and isolation. My aim is to create a visual poem of their collective experience of ageing, the sense of loneliness that living apart at the start of the pandemic has meant. My father is now living in an aged care facility. Ageing in itself speaks about a segregation from society, a confinement of the mind and body, a slow withdrawal from life. As migrants, their life has always been about displacement.
The metaphoric images move between portraits, closeups, artefacts from the family home and abstract symbols. Memory does not follow a straight path, and similarly this story cannot be told in a linear structure (sequential) but rather the form I have chosen is circular (recurrent) to evoke a universal emotion of preparing for death.
Twin Veils
My parents bedroom they shared for many years now is unoccupied, my father moved to an aged care facility at the beginning of the pandemic. My mother chose to move to the smaller bedroom.
Ambergris I-Mother
My mother at the threshold of our 1900's family home, she is entering the home. She is obscured by the glass.
Drift
A poetic interlude acts as a symbol of the fluidity of time, water is slowly drifting as life drifts towards ageing and leaving our time on the Earth.
Ambergris II-Father
My father at the threshhold of our family home, he is returning home for Easter Sunday. His gaze is of a man waiting to enter his former home. He no longer lives with us.
Waiting
My mothers life is now one of isolation and waiting. She is caught in the transparent curtains of their bedroom between memory and anticipation.
Moiri (Mourning Figure)
A metaphoric image of the moiri, the female mourners in Ancient Greece who were responsible for the burial rites of the dead. Seen here with upraised arms a gesture of lamentation. This image speaks about the end which is looming for my parents and the preparations that need to be made.
'But I Have My Wife'
My father uttered these words as he was photographed with his young bride. A remembrance of things passed, yet still remain. She is now 'veiled' in the house, metaphorically speaking, behind curtains, beyond the glass doors.
Christ is Risen
This is the common greeting we exchange on Easter Sunday, the traditional Greek Easter red eggs my mother has dyed for years are now symbolically in fragments and are a vestige of a life consumed and time spent.
Shepherd
In Greece, my father was a shepherd and a farmer. We now need to shepherd him to the end of his life. He will be 90 next year, he is in an aged care home now where this image was taken. His staff is now replaced with his walking cane. The way he held it in this portrait made me think of his youth before he emigrated to Australia in the 1960's. He looks out to a future unknown, silent.
T-Rex
My nephew left this toy dinosaur sitting at the back window of the house. It seems to speak about
the age that has passed, we all will face our own mortality and our ultimate extinction.
Still Life
My mother visits my father three times a week. She sees it as her duty, they are together but apart. Their gaze is somewhere else. They are both facing their own demise from this life. A moment of pause, a melancholia hangs in the air. Natura Morta, a life that is still.
Somewhere in Brescia
My mothers pride and joy is the walnut handcarved dining table from master craftsmen in Brescia, Italy. We have had so many celebratory meals at this meal. An old photograph is on the table of my father and my younger sister, mother of my nephew. The late afternoon light hangs in the air.
And Then I'll Fly Away
This image was taken in the 'sacred room' a southern Europen place where the most important visitors are welcomed in the home. All my mothers treasures are there, like the velvet couch and the brass eagle. A heavy object that can never fly. My father holds it like an offering, a hope of transendence, of taking flight. A final migration.
Chrysanthemum
Flowers gifted to my mother on Mother's Day, also the symbol of death and mourning. Here they capture the reflection of the back garden against a small golden icon.
Repose
My fathers bed at the aged care facility. I am preparing myself for when I see his room empty as in this image, after he is gone. This body of work is a visual homage and poem to my parents in the last stages of life.
Particles of Light
What remains of this world will only be the last particles of light, dust, flickers and colours from inside our consciousness.