Father and Sun

In a child's life, a father figure is the defining factor. The presence of a father influences self-esteem, relationship patterns, gives a positive or negative male image, and provides security. When I was 6 years old, my father stopped coming to pick me up and I didn't see him for 11 years. Before we could repair the relationship, he died. The death of a parent you loved as a child and then abandoned causes not only physical distance, but also emotional rupture. The trauma and experience of absence stays with us constantly, even if we ignore it. The death of a parent makes the impossibility of reconciliation with that parent permanent, and the trauma of abandonment resurfaces again and again in the present. We want to understand his or her reasons, his or her mistakes, his or her choices, or even try to make up for the absence he or she has caused. The question arises: can we know someone after their death? The process of getting to know someone after death is indirect: we can get to know someone through memories, documents and the stories of others. This inevitably means that the process of getting to know someone remains fragmented, distorted by all the participants and by our own subjective experience. Coming to know a dead person is not merely an exploration of someone, but also a personal task: trying to come to terms with past events and accepting the imperfect human side of them. In this series, 8 years after my father's death, I try to get to know him. I get to know the places where his life took place, the objects he left behind, and I meet his family for the first time.