Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine by Anna Galí

The story of the double secret life, between reality and virtuality, of my son who died from an overdose at 18yo.

In March 2017, when her 18-year-old son, Tomeu, tragically died from an overdose, Anna made the shocking discovery of a side of his life he had been sharing on social networks but hiding from her.

Distraught from this revelation, Catalan photographer attempted to reconstruct his life story to help her mourn my loss. With the help of computer-savvy friends, she hacked his phone and computer in search of traces of his hidden existence. Tomeu was a biomedical engineering student and tested drugs, then shared his daily activities on Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter.

His double life between reality and virtuality lies at the heart of Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine, awarded the Images Vevey Book Award Special Jury Prize 2023/2024 by the jury chaired by photographer Paul Graham.

Using different sources (family archive, digital appropriation, texts written by him, personal documents, screenshots and Galí's own images showing spaces that were meaningful to him together with some of his objects) Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine addresses issues such as our relationship with death or grief, along with the therapeutic power of the artistic practice, and it's also a call to investigate how we deal with addictions and to break prejudices around them, by showing the human story behind, and to raise awareness about the vulnerability and fragility of youth in the chaos of today's digital world

* Time on Quaaludes and Red Wine is a verse from Tomeu’s favourite song “Time” (David Bowie, Aladdin Sane) as well as the title of the “short autobiography” that he wrote in November 2016.