The Many Deaths Of My Mother - Book

176 pages, hardcover, 170 × 240 mm, edition of 500.

The Many Deaths of My Mother is a photographic book about living loss and grief as a quiet, ongoing presence in life. Through photography and poetry, the book explores how loss does not always appear as a sudden ending, but slowly and often invisibly weaves itself into identity, relationships and the way we see the world. Living loss eventually affects everyone, yet due to a lack of language and recognition, it is rarely named as grief and is therefore often carried in silence and alone.

The starting point of this book lies in my personal experience. Living loss has been part of my life from a young age, but it was only when my mother became ill around ten years ago that I became truly aware of it. Her illness profoundly changed our relationship: our roles reversed and at times I became her caregiver. While she remains physically present, it feels as though I am losing her little by little. I grieved what disappeared and what changed, without words, rituals or space to hold that grief.

During this period I did not know how to express myself, but I did have a camera. Photography became an instinctive way to process what I could not put into words. Naturally, I began making images of moments that offered me calm: empty landscapes where I could briefly breathe, details that provided a sense of grounding, my own hands as proof of presence. I made self-portraits during periods in which I was living in a kind of survival mode; not to show myself, but to find myself again. As a visual diary, the work became a quiet record of how I was truly doing. By working with analogue photography I made moments tangible and slowed down time; space to breathe emerged.