http://ccdigitalpress.org/reconstructingthearchive/hidalgo.html

13:01-13:35

Video:

The first image is a still photo of a man laying on the floor next to a child, surrounded by several other family members. The next is a video of the author and her two sons playing on the floor with a drum. The third is a zoom-in shot of a young man’s photo hanging on the wall amidst a collection of other family pictures.

Audio:

My father, who disappeared at 42, never managed to age enough to fade and deteriorate alongside his possessions, but I aim to do so surrounded by what he left behind, woven with the objects that tell the parts of my own story that are separate from his. More than the articles and letters, these objects keep my father present in my daily life and that of my husband and sons. The objects’ presence is a constant reminder of his absence, a rhetorical performance of loss that allows some physical version of him to populate my adult memories in spite of his disappearance.