The Wait

There is death, wounds, a war that we hope will come to an end. Then come a peace treaty, a surrender. The fighting stops. Remain the wait and anguish. The reflex to go to the window hoping to see the disappeared go home. He does not come back. They look for him in crowds, knowing that it's useless. They see a familiar figure, think to recognize in a cafe, in the street. He is not there. They deal with it, convince themselves that nothing has happened to him.

As a result of my work on wars and the structural violence they engender, I want to develop a project that focuses on the aftermath, the cases of the missing and their loved ones, captive in this never-ending wait. Without answers, how to mourn ? In most cases, relatives are ready to drop the charges against those responsible in exchange for an answer, the remains of the loved one. How can parents forgive ? How much this state of uncertainty can eat up ?

Mother, father, wife, husband, sister, brother or children. They live against the flow. Everyone forgets, expecting to turn the page as fast as possible. An empty bed or room, the clothes hanging in the wardrobe. Women often bear the burden. Mothers die before they get the truth, children continue the search process. It is passed on from one generation to another. The family keeps building on the absence, the lack of a foundation.

Started in Nepal and Northern Ireland, I will continue this project in Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Spain. This work must be a sensitive, palpable approach, mixing photography, archival documents, sound and video. It intends to question the weight of disappearances in history, within the family, the psychological pain of relatives, who fear that the loved one is forgotten, and disappears permanently.