Beyond Your Silences

I went through a period of grief without calling it by name.

As long as the word is missing, the experience it describes remains vague, almost nonexistent. It was after my mother’s death in 2022 that I discovered the term white mourning, A form of silent, insidious loss experienced when caring for a loved one with cognitive impairment. Putting a name to this period I lived through in the background sparked the need to revisit it, to immerse myself in it once more.

How do you grieve the physical loss of someone you’ve already lost in some other way?

These images accompany this shift, superimpose different time frames, and attempt to fill in gaps or forgotten periods. The resulting photographic investigation stems from a desire to "to come across something". A word, a clue, a telling detail, a trace she might have left me before she was gone. It’s about continuing to see and forge connections despite her absence. So I reclaim her image—my own, ours, and now, to some extent, my father’s as well.

This work was carried out in the Hauts-de-France region—Amiens, Les Hortillonnages, Berck-sur-Mer, and Inval-Boiron—the area where I grew up and which serves as the intimate setting for this study.