Shared Days
Photograph series on Alu Dibond, 2007
Saar University of Fine Arts (HBKsaar), Saarbrücken, Germany
Shared Days is a photograph series on Alu Dibond that grew out of reflections on deceased family members and friends. The project began with research at Saarbrücken’s Old Cemetery, founded in 1851. Over time, the site changed its character and gradually became both cemetery and public park. Because of this, it offered a field shaped by memory, transition and layered time. The series does not document gravestones as such. Instead, it develops through macro impressions whose forms, textures and atmospheres evoke remembrance, loss and the meaning of human connection.
Memory, Conversation and Surface
I began by writing about people I had lost. Four short texts emerged from that process, and each one carried the memory of a specific relationship. I then asked close friends to read these texts. A few weeks later, we met again and spoke about what had stayed with them, what had shifted and what had returned in the meantime. In this way, the work moved from writing into conversation, and from private recollection into a shared field of reflection.
I recorded these conversations and listened to them repeatedly. As a result, memory appeared less as a fixed image and more as something layered, unstable and echoing. Therefore, the photographs developed through a macro lens and through close attention to surfaces, textures, fragments and natural details found in the park environment.
Shared Days and Park Nature
Leaves, plants, stone fragments, weathered surfaces and small shifts of light entered the work as carriers of association. At the same time, the recorded conversations remained present in the background of the process. They shaped the emotional tone of the images and gave the series an inner resonance. Because of this, the photographs do not depict loss directly. Instead, they suggest memory, mourning and relation through form, texture and visual rhythm.
Image, Loss and Resonance
In this way, Shared Days connects cemetery research, park nature, recorded conversation and photographic surface. The series creates a visual field in which memory is carried through association, detail and atmosphere. As a result, Shared Days becomes a work about shared remembrance, intimacy and the fragile persistence of relationships across time.