What Remains of the Night

© claudia corrent - “Because it only builds up out of fragments".John Ashbery © claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project © claudia corrent - I risk my life for the dead,I risk death for the living. Recklessly hoping for the pity of both.Enrico Testa View all images ↓
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The photographic project explores the themes of grief and memory. Through the combination of past images, diary pages, private and public archives, the work traces the relationship with my father, who passed away in 2019.

What Remains of the Night

“In my opinion,” said Austerlitz, “we do not understand the laws that govern the return of the past, and yet I have the increasing impression that time does not exist at all, but that there are only different spaces, in each other, according to a higher stereometry, between which the living and the dead can enter and leave according to their disposition, and the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that we, we who are still alive, assume the appearance of unreal beings to the eyes of the dead, visible only in particular atmospheric and light conditions. W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz”

“Mortal man, Leucò, has only this of immortal. The memory he carries and the memory he leaves. Names and words are this. Before the memory they too smile, resigned.” (C.Pavese)

My father passed away on the morning of June 7th, 2019.

The images speak of what came before and after his disappearance.

In a time frame that no longer exists, I tell my father, the night before his disappearance, what has brought us here.

A way to honor, to order the pain, to find a balance in the pain.

In a night that I take back, in a wait that I know will end, I recover pieces of our life, to accompany him as he did, only this time I do it.

The images contain superimposed photographs, images from our family archive, screenshots of old VHS tapes found, exchanged messages and pages of a diary that my father wrote at the age of 21 and that we found a month after his death. This diary begins in 1965, a few months before he met my mother. The rest are fragments, suggestions, memories. New images.

The moment my father died, I looked everywhere for things that would remind me of him: I had written down in a notebook the things we did together, memories confused between those of childhood, mixed with things related to my adulthood: these images are ways to recover that bond: in reality I don't want the image of my father to disappear into the darkness.

The work speaks of the time we have with the people we love. Time is synchronous, everything happens together, everything happens at the same time, because we continue to love very much even those we lose, and that love continues to return in a circular way, in a continuous return because everything has been and everything continues to be.

I wanted to continually remember, and not to forget. If my father's body had been taken from me without having the time to say goodbye, then I needed at least that presence, which came from afar, mixed with the sensations of childhood.

© claudia corrent - “Because it only builds up out of fragments".John Ashbery
i

“Because it only builds up out of fragments".John Ashbery

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
© claudia corrent - I risk my life for the dead,I risk death for the living. Recklessly hoping for the pity of both.Enrico Testa
i

I risk my life for the dead,I risk death for the living. Recklessly hoping for the pity of both.Enrico Testa

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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The old ones already know why And even the sad hotelsThat too much and for little and not enough yetAnd it's only onceVinicio Capossela

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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Hi sweetheart, I just saw the video of your promotion and I can't tell you how proud I am of you. It's true that for a while now you've been giving us emotions that I don't know how to express properly. We love you so much, mom and dad

© claudia corrent - A picture of my father when he was a child
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A picture of my father when he was a child

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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This coming night will bring no painThis night will pass without hurting youThis night will passOr we will make it passFrancesco De GregoriMy dad and me

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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Hi Claudia, I wanted to congratulate you on your excellent on the exams you took. What can I say... well done, well done, and well done again!In the photo, my father as a child in the city where I graduated, Trento in northern Italy.

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
© claudia corrent - My father at 21 years old, with my sister, behind the letters he wrote to my mother when they had just met.
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My father at 21 years old, with my sister, behind the letters he wrote to my mother when they had just met.

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
© claudia corrent - With love Enzo.The back of one of the postcards my father sent my mother when they were young.
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With love Enzo.The back of one of the postcards my father sent my mother when they were young.

© claudia corrent - My father in a found frame of a video in the 90s
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My father in a found frame of a video in the 90s

© claudia corrent - Me as a child with my father and mother.
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Me as a child with my father and mother.

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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“And so, into our darkness life seeps, Keeping its part of the bargain. But what of Houses, standing ruined, desolate just now:Is this not also beautiful and wonderful? For where a mirage has once been, life must be.”JOHN ASHBERY

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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See, this sleep that now overtakes usis like the sea withdrawing from the shore, revealing the bodies of living beings in abandonment, the bodies of dead beings forgotten:both more corporeal than ever.Enrico Testa

© claudia corrent - "Rage, rage against the dying of the light"Dylan Thomas
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"Rage, rage against the dying of the light"Dylan Thomas