Photographs and notes printed on Hahnemühle Matt Fibre and Munken Print paper

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There are forms of absence that precede death.

This work stems from one of them: the emotional paralysis before decline and the inability to be truly present beside someone already saying goodbye.

My father first lost his voice, then his movement, then his breath.

I was never able to ask him how he felt.

The notes he left behind form the core of this project. Within them lie fear, hope, fatigue, and confusion. What I failed to ask, he wrote. These texts dialogue with the spaces of his final years, the family archive, and the landscapes of Asturias—a place he longed to return to as his world shrank. Between writing and image, a fragmented narrative emerges: a delayed attempt to draw close.

The silence was not only that of the illness. It was also my own.

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Artwork included in the exhibition “Interdependencias”, Official Section of PHotoESPAÑA.