We live our lives day-to-day, paying little attention to our home surroundings, familiar and unchanging. The TV in the living room, the stove for meals, the bathroom to fulfill the necessities. Then one day that foundation is rocked, obliviousness now awareness; things are exactly the same but forever changed. The death of a loved one changes us, especially a parent and in this instance, my father-in-law.

 

This was my husband's first trip home to El Salvador in 14 years and my first visit; a somber visit as it was for the funeral. The arrival home was a jarring one, for both him and I, in different ways. He was happy to see his mother, grieving for his father, and sad to see how his home was the same yet not, rundown and empty without his father. For myself, the loss brought back a flood of emotions from when I had lost my father, yet it was coupled with the need to support my family during their time of grief. It was this overwhelming feeling of grief surrounding us that compelled me to document their home, a need to encapsulate this moment where time stood still for everyone.

 

Grief doesn’t magically disappear, it changes, morphs, and fades with time. With these photographs, the labor intensive polymerphotogravure process made it possible to physically work through the heavy emotions, each step deteriorating the details. The final print no longer like the original photograph, yet containing the time of grief we knew. These photogravures are a documentation of decayed memories and heavy grief from seeing that nothing has changed and yet things will never be the same.