Life in film stills
My reality and my life have changed drastically since my dad’s passing. I began by seeing the positive side of everything, stupidly so because I now realize that giving that perspective to everything was a coping mechanism to avoid seeing the sad reality of things. This is a documentation of the journey from when it started, to when the rose-colored glasses came off.
I find this particular image to be quite telling and basically a visual representation of my mental state; I took this image a month or two after he passed and I became obsessed with that specific street because it was his favorite and I took this image. Sundown makes the tonality pink giving it a very dreamy and romanticized look which at the time, I was pretty much perpetually living in. It was bliss while it lasted.
Took this at another place he really loved to visit here in Victoria, a very emblematic one at that. This photo brings me a lot of nostalgia given that I feel it looks like a picture I could've very much taken thirty years ago and also because it reminds me of a song called “Cien Años” (a hundred years) by Pedro Infante in which he sings about how when you love someone theirs and your existence will be interlinked forever and how they will love them till the end of their days.
I also take note of how the color palette of the image is becoming more grounded as I go through my life and begin to lose the rose-colored prism. So much so that I actually started to become angry and my perspective and memories of my dad became somewhat warped by my grief and extreme positivism that somehow turned into anger.
And after I worked through my anger, this is where I currently am. Excited for the future and being able to capture the human experience in all its beauty and grit. It’s almost been two years since he passed and I’ve learned a lot of lessons thanks to him and having to experience such monumental grief at such a young age. One of them and the most important one is that grief is simply a present reminder of your existing love. When one goes through an experience similar to the one I went through I realized you have a choice, and that’s to either become a better person or let it consume your entire being and simply turn into a shadow of yourself. I chose the first option.
Thank you to my sister, my mom, Camila, Rodrigo, Gaby, Fer, Beto, and Charlie for being there for me when I needed it the most.
I love you all.
