My father has always taken photographs. Since childhood, with film cameras he kept his entire life. He did it without claiming anything, without expecting recognition. He stole moments that would have disappeared forever, then filed them carefully into albums stored in a closet. Simply. Out of love for the people he photographed, out of love for his family.
Film is rare by nature. Shots are limited. You only discover them after they’ve been developed. You have to trust the moment without an immediate preview, without checking. You stay inside the instant, you keep living it. And only later do you return to it. I find that more honest, and less intrusive. Film photography doesn’t steal the moment, it extends it into the future.
As I grew up, I realized what a treasure my father had built. What moves me, when I think about it, is the discretion of his gesture. Childhood photographs are irreplaceable. Our memories from that time are often blurry, reshaped by years. A photograph can bring the thread back, and let you see yourself as you truly were.
And looking at them, I realized that as children, we know everything. Our tastes, our dreams, what truly animates us. It’s all there, intact, without a filter. Then we get lost along the way. We meet the rough side of life, the part that can bruise us, wear us down, until the day we try to find that child again. To understand what they knew, and what we forgot.
My father’s photographs helped me stay myself. They helped me understand what moved me naturally when I was eight. And they helped me find the thread again whenever I drifted too far.
Recently, I thanked him. I told him what his photographs mean to me. He was deeply moved. He showed me he had kept all his cameras. All but one, which was stolen from him during a mishap. He still regrets it.
Each camera is tied to an era, to faces, to a particular light. My father never claimed the title of artist. But what he was doing was exactly that. Capturing what disappears. Turning time into something you can hold.
All the childhood photos I’ve been sharing with you for weeks in these letters are his, taken from his collection. And the new music you’ll discover in a few weeks has a link to childhood. It carries the fulfillment of naive dreams, dreams with no limits inside imagination. Dreams still intact, before I had collided with the things that can shrink us. Everything blends together today. My childhood dreams, my adult understanding, the feeling that my life has always been this film, the necessity of never forgetting where I come from.
I believe in real things. The ones life gives us, and its poetry. The ones that disappear, and that we have to capture if we want to keep a trace. That is part of the role of artists. Saving what time carries away.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m living out a secret dream of my father. Where he had to face more pragmatic realities, to renounce a part of himself so his children could fully focus on what they truly love. That secret dream I read today between his photographs. The dream of a man who never stopped creating, even when no one encouraged him to.
Sincerely,
Sofiane Pamart
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Thank you for your words, Sofiane