Phillip Toledano (1968-) was born in London to a French Moroccan mother, and an American father. He believes that photographs should be likeunfinished sentences. There should always be space for questions. Phillip’s work is socio-political and varies in medium from photography to installation, sculpture and painting. The themes of his work are primarily socio-political, although lately have strayed into the deeply personal.
He has a BA in English literature, however his art education came from his father, who was a full time artist. Phillip’s consider himself as a conceptual artist; ‘Everything starts with an idea, and the idea determines the execution’.
His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The New York Times magazine, The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Wallpaper, The London Times, The Independent Magazine, Le Monde, and Interview, amongst others.
Days with my Father
Toledano started this project which he refers to as a journal that spans a three year period (2006-2009) after his mother died and discovering that his father suffered from short term memory loss. This journal illustrates their relationship together and their time spent together. At the beginning of this project Toledano explains the background knowledge of this personal photo-journal of his father aging with the pain of not being able to remember his wife’s death or smaller simpler things such as the dog’s name. Within this series, some images have a personal note next to them discussing a moment or a fact between that certain image and his father.
“My Mum died suddenly on September 4th, 2006
After she died, I realized how much she’d been shielding me from my father’s mental state. He didn’t have alzheimers, but he had no short-term memory, and was often lost.
I took him to the funeral, but when we got home, he’d keep asking me every 15 minutes where my mother was. I had to explain over and over again, that she had died.
This was shocking news to him.
Why had no-one told him?
Why hadn’t I taken him to the funeral?
Why hadn’t he visited her in the hospital?
He had no memory of these events.
After a while, I realized I couldn’t keep telling him that his wife had died. He didn’t remember, and it was killing both of us, to constantly re-live her death.
I decided to tell him she’d gone to Paris, to take care of her brother, who was sick.
‘Days with my father’ is a journal”.
What I like about these images from this series, is that each frame is meaningful, there is a reason behind each one that tells part of this story between the photographer Toledano and his dad and/or of his dad’s journey with his memory disorder which each image above is aided with text to help the audience. (The text from each image can be read further down the page). I like that not all the images are focused on the main subject, that there are a few still life shots of objects that play a role in the audience being able to connect and understand more with the subject’s story and the photographers. I think it gives a nice break between the photographs of the dad, being able to see into his struggles on a more personal level when viewing frames such as image 3 and 6 (going from left – right) as though these photographs may not seem that interesting to outside viewers who haven’t read into this series but for me and the audience, these photographs are small parts of illustrating this journey and they are images of memories of the dad; as image 3 is a image of a photograph of the main subject’s brother who he doesn’t remember had passed away and the sixth image is of a written page of a note pad that his father used to write questions and notes down for himself for when he forgot.
I also quite like the use of colour that Toledano has utilized as the colour of the images are quite neutral, bland and cold which works well with his theme as these tones associate with his dad’s short term memory loss, that he is unable to remember the death of his wife and his brother and the loneliness and the frustration that he must feel because of this memory disorder, and for his son as well also having to deal and struggle with this disorder too along with his dad, having to remind him everyday about his mum going through the pain of saying that she’s passed away.
I also find the framing of the images quite interesting, with most shots of the father being quite close up, mainly framing his head and shoulders which for me focuses the attention on the dad and his emotions more, in my opinion makes me have an emotional connection with the subject, feeling sympathy towards him, for example; image two, he looks quite stressed and sad and the shallow depth of field really emphasises this so I can’t help but feel sympathy and quite sad for him that he has to go through this everyday. And with the fifth photograph, he seems more content and relaxed, were it seems to me that this is a moment of normality for both the subject and the photographer. However I do also like the forth image were the image is taken from a distance, another room, giving the viewer a different look and connection to the subject. I find the composition of this image to be aesthetically pleasing, not because it’s of a man sat on the toilet but maybe because of the vertical lines leading the eye to the subject and the contrast of colours and tones from going from one room into another.
This series is a very personal look into the life of Toledano’s father and his relationship with him alone and with him and his struggle with his short term memory loss. The use of the variety of photographs from the portraits to the still life’s gives the audience a another way of understanding and connecting to this journal and with the help of the texts with the images also add to this effect. The pieces of text I find are a nice touch to the series giving the viewer a deeper look and again understanding into this extraordinary and unfortunate life.
Texts next to the photographs:
The first image text is the small background text from above.
The second image; (going cross; left -right)
The third image;
The fourth image;
The fifth image;
And last the sixth image;
