Whispers - a Love Letter to my Mother
"I am writing you from inside a body that used to be yours.
Which is to say, I am writing as a son."
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
For the last few years, on my yearly travel to Brazil to be with my mother, I started taking pictures of her, a labor of love. In October 2021, she turned 97 years old, and before my travel, I started feeling the urge to make a photo project of her. I had no idea how to put it together or make it happen, but to my surprise, it was done and printed in less than two months.
This project is a loving meditation on my aging mother. A woman with so many contradictions, she is the person who shaped me the most into the person I am today, but even after all these years, I still don't fully understand her.
It was daunting to capture the essence of someone I love in a photograph, but it was also a thoughtful exercise to figure her out. I would be by her side for hours, listening to her stories, caring for her, feeding her, and sleeping with her, immersing myself in her daily routine.
I became very conscious of her vulnerability at this moment in her life. Those were intimate and meaningful moments yet emotionally exhausting. I wanted to feel what she was going through and the silence that falls on and around the very old.
WHISPERS is an immersive introspection into the world of my mother, fragments of her final years; it's a personal project, yet it speaks of universal subjects - unconditional love, the slow passing of time, the abiding feeling of loneliness that comes with the finitude of late old age.
Of all my mother's seven daughters, I am the only one who looks physically like her; I always heard that growing up, but I never agreed with it. As I became older, day by day, I see her when I look in a mirror.
Like her, I am a woman with many contradictions; I can be fearless when fighting for what I believe when following my dreams, but I felt almost paralyzed when putting together this project. I couldn't decide which version to print, so I printed two versions with slight differences.
On the evening of November 14th, 2022, my beloved mother unexpectedly passed away, holding my hands.
