the unmentioned / the guess

A text from father, sleeper is exhibited in a groupshow in Prague and someone wrote a review of of the show. It’s in Czech and it is through artificial translation that I read of her finding touching honesty in my work and others’. Then, she mentions my work as a text in which the author describes the taking of the photograph of a sleeping father who later died in the same place. Now that is quite something, for the truth is I do not mention him dying in the same place. Not in the text, not even in all the conversations I had about and around this work. But he did. And she guessed, assumed, read between the lines.

I do not mention how the couch he is sleeping on was soon replaced by a hospital bed. I do not mention how these same few meters became an almost permanent place for him. I do not mention the state of his body nor the extent of his pain. I do not mention the ominous tumor that must have been growing in him while I photographed him. I do not mention his eyes flicking to the window, awaiting the doctor. I do not mention euthanasia, the needle, the sunken veins. I do not mention singing to him. I do not mention hiding behind my sister. I do not mention my mother’s love. I do not mention how my ex was there at the dying moment and what that means. I do not. But perhaps anyone can guess.