CONCLUSION: 

This project is really important for me because I would like to bring a positive discourse on an event of my life which was traumatizing.

Having a old father (I was born when he was 61) is a quite rare experience. He retired when I was 3. As a result, I spent a lot of time with him and we built a big complicity. It has been very hard to lose the image of a father when hewoke up and he wasn’t himself anymore. But my mother and I fought to help him to get fine again and I’m incredibly happy that my father is still there,5 years later, in a state for which we would have never hoped he would be.

The disease, more particularly cancer, and its consequences, affect much more people than we imagine. We all have somebody around us whohas a close person who suffers from this plague. But maybe you don’t even know that… It is a taboo subject about which we speak scarcely because it has something to do with privacy and it raises fundamental and agonizing questions.

I hid myself behind my camera during the process of his illness, as to protect me from my emotions. I caught the moment to accept it.

As Maurice’s daily state still fluctuates a little – there are some days when he doesn’t speak, or is more lost than other days – the photography has become a new way of communication between him and me. As soon as I take out my camera, he poses immediately, even if he’s tired. An immediate connection is made and we share beautiful moments. I look forward to being able to live this big experience with my father, so that we can again carry out something together in spite of the aftereffects of his disease.

The roles are exchanged ; he becomes again a child, and I, I become an adult.

Creating these positive, thoughtful and crafted images, inspired by him, will be for me as the conclusion and the complete acceptance of this event which arose in our lives.

This personal project speaks about life and the closeness between childhood and old age. Testimony of a course, it also speaks about the disease and the family because with some support, courage and love, a person having been at the edge of the death can be reconstructed, even at the age of 80.