I Photograph to Remember

Pedro Meyer is a Mexican photographer. Although born in Spain, his family emigrated to Mexico in 1937. Initially a documentary photographer he is also known as the founder of ZoneZero, a photography webiste.

In 1991 he published the first ever CD-ROM containing sound and images.

I came across Meyer’s work, in the book Photograph and Death (Linkman A. (2011)) while researching how death has been handled in photography, a theme that I have been exploring in my work during the last few years.

The film I photograph to remember is a compilation of photographs the Meyer took during the events that culminated in his parent’s deaths, nine weeks apart.

My own parents died two years apart and in some ways parallels what happened to Meyer’s parents. Mum was diagnosed with breast cancer, had a mastectomy and started chemotherapy. The treatment left her feeling sick and so, with the agreement of the doctors, and the belief that there would be a very low chance of further cancer, stopped the chemo.

In the summer of 2014 she was diagnosed with cancer a second time, but this time it was terminal. Mum, who had taken care of everything, including watching over my father who had been forgetting things and having conversations out loud with out realising it, eventually died in the November.

Dad was left to fend for himself on a day-to-day basis, something that worried us, but in the end he did marvelolously well.

Two years and 7 days after Mum died, Dad died suddenly. My sister and I had jokingly said that we’d be surprised if he was still with us two years after Mum had passed away, but he proved us wrong.

In Meyer’s case, his Mum suffered a brain haemorrhage. In my Dad’s case, after a series of falls over a number of months, he died of a fractured spine and a peritoneal bleed.

Watching I photograph to remember I’m reminded that a lot of the photographs I have taken over the years have been a way to record people and events in ways that allow them to remain long after the point where the people in the photos are no longer alive. Just Like Pedro Meyer, I too, photograph to remember.

References

1. Linkman, A. (2011) Photography and Death. London: Reaction Books Ltd. At: www.reactionbooks.co.uk