TEMPE STORM COLE
So they are leaving the house & Settling dust
georgia, USA, 2018-2020
It is a double series of photos that takes place in two times: the first one around my grandparents’ house when they emptied it to go to a retirement home, and two years later in my great-aunt’s house when she discovers her breast cancer. It was an experience I had already wanted to document when I left the family apartment, but it was already too late. Everything that needed to be remembered was already gone, only remnants remained. It was what you don’t keep and what you don’t throw away either. The limbo of the apartment. Here at my grandparents’ house, I was still a little late. They had already started emptying and throwing out, asking us what we wanted to keep. Nothing was in its place, and the house wasn’t really lived in anymore. The beautiful thing that really happened was that the light came in and made this departure obvious. The missing furniture let the light in. It revealed the absence. It is the light that creates this infinite nostalgia, that makes you hear the siren of the passing train and the smell of air freshener mixed with dust.
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The characters in this story seem to live the tragedy within a micro-event, through the staging of the light. I tried to make portraits through the places, not to be in the narrative. It’s more an experience of light, or the absence of light, which signals what is missing. The contrast between the warmth of the living and the cold materiality of the inanimate. There is an attachment to details, materials and textures that seem impalpable. It’s a bit like time passing without leaving a trace. It is like a feeling of the end of time. In all these images, there is a lot of nostalgia, it comes from a feeling of disillusionment, in front of the loss and especially to see one’s elders suffer the loss. Loss of control, loss of loved ones, loss of status. It’s like everyone is overwhelmed. This series is not documenting a particular event. It’s about making implicit portraits through places.​
