What Remains of the Night

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project © claudia corrent - Hands. mine and my father's. © claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project View all images ↓
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  • Dates
    2023 - 2024
  • Author
  • Topics Contemporary Issues, Archive
  • Location Italy
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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 - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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“Because it only builds up out of fragments". John AshberyMy father's handwriting in his diary that he wrote when he was 19 years old.

© claudia corrent - Hands. mine and my father's.
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Hands. mine and my father's.

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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"Here we are Stuck by this riverYou and I Underneath a sky that's ever falling down, down, down Ever falling down Through the day As if on an oceanWaiting here Always failing to remember why we came, came, cameI wonder why we came You talk to me As if from a distance And I reply With impressions chosen from another time, time, time From another time"B.Eno

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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[...] And so, into our darkness seeps life, keeping the covenant. But what ofOf houses in ruins, desolate at this time: is not this also beautiful and wonderful? /For where once there was a mirage, there must be life.[...]"John Ashbery

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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My father's message on messenger after my graduation from university. Everything is falling."Hi honey I just saw the video of your promotion and you don't know how much I amproud of you. Of course it is that for some time now you have been giving us emotions that I don't know how toexpress as you should. We love you a lot mom and dad"

© claudia corrent - my father and his half-sister
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my father and his half-sister

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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My father and I in this suspended space. "Sentinel, how much is left of the night? Sentinel, how much is left of the night?" Sentinel answers, "The morning comes, then also the night; if you want to ask, ask, come" (Is 21:11-12).

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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My father's message after a college exam.Pictured is my father as a child in the city where I graduated."Hi Claudia I want to congratulate you on your excellent grade on the exams you taken. What can I say to you ... bravo bravo and bravo again. Hi dad"

© 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 - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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"This coming time will not give pain,This time will pass, without hurting us.This time will pass or we will make it pass." F. De Gregori

© claudia corrent - The body.I miss my father's body. The thing I fear most is forgetfulness.
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The body.I miss my father's body. The thing I fear most is forgetfulness.

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
© claudia corrent - My father's screenshots of a found video. It was celebrating my sister's birthday.
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My father's screenshots of a found video. It was celebrating my sister's birthday.

© claudia corrent - Me as a child with my mother. There are always hands.That care, that caress, that touch.
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Me as a child with my mother. There are always hands.That care, that caress, that touch.

© claudia corrent - My father lived for a time when he was a boy in Heidelberg, Germany.
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My father lived for a time when he was a boy in Heidelberg, Germany.

© 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 - "Are in the invisible". My father after a month of being gone had come in a dream to visit me and tell me these words.
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"Are in the invisible". My father after a month of being gone had come in a dream to visit me and tell me these words.

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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My father dances with my mother. My father keeps visiting my mother in dreams.Ordinary things happen: they prepare food, tidy up, fight. Things that no longer happen during the day return during the dream.

© claudia corrent - My father holds my sister.Below is a letter he wrote to my mother when they had just met.
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My father holds my sister.Below is a letter he wrote to my mother when they had just met.

© claudia corrent - Image from the What Remains of the Night photography project
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"The mortal man, Leuko, has but this of immortality. The memory he bears and the memory he leaves behind. Names and words are this. In front of the memory they also smile, resigned." (C.Pavese)

What Remains of the Night by claudia corrent

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