Family Time

Family Time is a photographic screenshot-documentation of a parent-child relationship across national borders, modern communication, and death.

Family Time is a photographic documentation of a parent-child relationship across national borders, modern communication, and death.

My parents moved back to their home country of Portugal in 2008. At first, we had relatively sparse telephone contact. This changed when my father was given a smartphone and we, as a family, discovered video calling. Digital contact between myself, my sister, and my parents intensified when Covid-19 made it impossible to visit Portugal.

On September 18, 2021, my mother passed away. Almost two years prior, on a whim, I began capturing images from our video conversations with my parents. Taking screenshots became a habit over time. My parents have no distance to this device, and the conversations were just as meaningful and memorable as an in-person visit, despite the limited field of view and technical limitations. Without realizing it, I was able to document my mother‘s one-week dying process. She passed away from a carcinoma in the head, as later revealed.

A few weeks after the funeral, my sister and I returned to Germany, and I began capturing my father‘s grieving process using my smartphone. The day of death is now over a year ago. Although grief is still ever-present in these 7×15 cm video calls, there are more and more days when grief is not always at the forefront.

Picture is taken in the 46. Bremer Förderpreis für Bildende Kunst 2022 exhibition at the Städtische Galerie Bremen. More pictures on request.