Looking for my father (2013)

I was always interested to meet my father. Last time i saw him when I was three years old. I decided to reflect this idea using photography. I do not remember how he looked like, I do not have any image of him in my memory, I rather try to «find» him by means of photography, to create memories which i never had — memories about family with my father.

My mother was always dreaming of an ideal man. When we were watching movies of 60-70’s with french and italian actors (Belmondo, Delon, Mastroianni, Marais), she was always excited and often said to me «I always liked that kind of man».

She met my father in Sochi, it was a «resort» roman, which soon ended up with a marriage. She did not know much of him, only that he was a captain and worked somewhere at North Russia. They never lived together. He usually came for a few weeks and then dissapeared. At some point my mother found out that he has another wife and a child. She could never forgive him and soon they divorced.

In her albums there was almost no photo left of my father — not only she divorced with him, but also destroyed all the photos of him including those from the wedding day. However, I was able to find a few images from an old black and white passport photo machine. They were together on this shots, however one can not really see his face — images are quite small and he always wears «aviator» glasses. He looked like a young Belmondo. On these images they are kidding together, kissing each other and smile a lot. One of those photos I kept for my self (my mother never liked this and was trying to find out why I want to have his photo for a long time) and since then keep it in my wallet.

Really, what for do i need this photo? Sometimes I just want to look at it and imagine that my father, although i never met him, was as beautiful as Belmondo. On some occations I proudly show this photo to friends («My parents in ’70s»). Even if this photo never existed, I should have created it in Photoshop.

This project is very personal, somewhere inbetween documentary and fiction, where the dreams of my mother are real, but the memory, I created for myself based on them, is fictional.

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