The Snow Abides

The Snow Abides is a personal investigation into absence, oblivion, and death, but also the persistence of memory after death. This selection of images is taken from the project The Snow Abides, a book published in June 2025 by VOID.

How small life is here
and how big nothingness.
The sky, tired of light,
has given everything to the snow.
Drückendes Licht - Robert Walser

Can we preserve the memories of another person, becoming indirect, reflected witnesses? What happens to the memory of those who are no longer with us, to the substance their memories? Are these fragments of living memories connected to us and somehow eternal, renewing their form/shape/substance through interaction with us?

The Snow Abides is a personal investigation into absence, oblivion, and death, but it also explores the persistence of memory after death, even though its substance has changed. Seeking answers in the universal order and mysteries of the cosmos, it becomes the sole means to unveil the invisible laws that govern our microcosm — “two entities, where one is a scaled reproduction of the other, and through their resemblance, they form an indivisible whole—a unity where the parts exist in relation to the entirety” (Giuliano Kremmerz, Introduzione alla scienza ermetica).

This selection (consisting of single images, diptychs, and collages) is taken from the project The Snow Abides, a book published in June 2025 by VOID (limited edition, 100 copies), presented at Paris Photo in November 2025 and already sold out at the publisher.

In this selection, I have tried to remain somehow faithful to the original project’s concept, which in the editing process translates into the use of diptychs and collages, conveying the idea of a collection of layered images—apparently unrelated elements, fragments of memories placed alongside broader references—interweaving into a meditation on continuity. In some way, it echoes the literary structure of Robert Walser’s Micrograms and his “aesthetics of disappearance.”

Indeed, in the book, some verses by Robert Walser serve as "fil rouge" that gathers a heterogeneous collection of images: photographs taken with a smartphone or expired film as "aide mémoire" of a personal journey;  the absent gaze of my mother in an old photo from my father’s personal archive; a pixelated image of a deer, taken by my friend Julie before her passing, still residing on the camera I use. In addition, images from NASA archives, such as black holes or the supernova iPTF14hls, engage in an ongoing dialogue with illustrations by the Paracelsian physician Robert Fludd and his Utriusque Cosmi, maiores scilicet et minores, metaphysica, physica atque technica Historia (1617) and Philosophia mosaica (1638).

As a result of a workshop held at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (Istanbul) in May 2018, the dummy was shortlisted among the 30 best books for the FUAM Dummy Book Awards 2018. The book consisted of 3 booklets divided into chapters and was later completed with a fourth chapter, added in 2020. Its title is inspired by Michael Cashmore’s album, an exquisite poem in music.

The book is dedicated to the loving memory of Julie Hamelin and Roberta Fiorito.

The Snow Abides was listed among the PhMuseum Loved Photobooks of 2025, selected by Danaé Panchaud (curator, museologist, lecturer, director of the Centre de la Photographie Genève).

As the light in your eyes / Whose heavy lids close on me / My world, my life /They close on me / And I am not No longer  / They open / And I spring up their wish / Like a field of flowers / You close your eyes and I die  / Whilst others in sleep follow lambs / I look at my hands  / And count the Sun making another scar across my sky / And I close my eyes - Your Eyes Close (from: The Snow Abides) - Michael Cashmore