I Don't Recall The Music

'I Don't Recall The Music'

'I Don't Recall The Music' is a journal of loss, memory, nostalgia, melancholy and grief over a series of 30 images from 2020 to 2025. Each image is accompanied by a short, poetic caption that provides emotional context for the photograph. These images articulate the grief we experience over the death of loved ones, the collapse of relationships, the loss of friendships, and the departure of places we hold dear.

"Special photography. Each caption will cause another thought in your head about a similar memory. "

– Elijah, DJ, Author: Close the App, Make the Ting

The Reach, April 2020

I took this during lockdown in 2020, not long after I started taking photography seriously. I woke up one morning to find a beam of light across my bathroom cupboard. I thought that if I had come fifteen minutes earlier, the light would have been better, so I set my alarm for that the next day.

I was reaching for something.

I don’t know what I was reaching for.

The Yellow Room, March 2022

Whenever we stayed at our (paternal) grandparents’ house, my sister and I would sleep in this room with bright yellow wallpaper. My dad shared it with his brother when they were kids.

This was taken the same day as the previous photo, the last day we visited the house before it was sold.

The cupboard is empty, but my sister looked in it anyway.

Yellow is her favourite colour.

I hate it.

Woodbine Beach, February 2023

Sam’s grandmother told me the beach in Toronto had frozen over, so I went to photograph it.

I passed a woman who told me she had walked there every day for the last 40 years and had never seen it like this.

It was my second time at the beach.

I never saw it like this again.

This image was selected during an open call. The email went to my junk, and I had missed the deadline for the print submission. I quickly sent a grovelling reply to the gallery that organised the open call.

They never replied.