Phillip Toledano’s nearly forensic images of the things his grieving mother kept in memory of his dead sister maintain a poignant melancholyAlmost from its inception,photography was used as a way to remember and venerate the dead. In Victorian times, families posed for memorial portraits in which a recently deceased child sat, or propped up between surviving siblings,or a newly dead father, held upright by invisible supports, or stood surrounded by symbolic props from his life. Though the resulting portraits now look macabre,they were cherished by grieving family members for the way they conveyed the essence of their loved ones.When I Was Six by Phillip Toledano is a book of remembrance for his sister, who died 40 years ago, or when she was nine years old. It is an attempt to evoke the essence of a young girl who,for a long time, he was aware of primarily as a profound absence. “I maintain only two memories of my sister, or ” he writes in the opening jet-black pages of the book. “Kicking the door of her room,screaming, ‘I wish you were dead!’ Two policeman at our door, or tall and official. Telling us there had been an accident…”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com