Until Memory Do Us Part

Edge of Humanity Magazine

2 months ago

Photographer Patrizia Riviera is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘Until memory do us part’. To see Patrizia’s body of work, click on any photograph.

Photographs of deceased relatives in the kitchen, alongside COVID masks and disinfectant.

The chest of drawers with photographs of memories, including the one of the kiss on their fiftieth wedding anniversary.

At the cemetery, my mother’s hand caresses my father’s photo

In December 2017 my father fell and hit his head to take out the dustbin, as requested by my mother. It was dark, it had rained and he was half-blind, but if he didn’t, my mother would come out, walking with difficulty. Since then, he has gradually begun to die, gradually showing signs of dementia, which my sister and I had not noticed. We thought that sick woman was my mother, who had behavioral disturbances, delusions and confusion. I saw my father suffer first from the loss of his autonomy, then of his dignity, and then nothing more, then he fell into the void of illness. He did not eat, did not sleep, but if he needed, he always shouted the name of my mother, who had to run, even if there was already someone else next to him. A few months after his death I photographed some objects that belonged to him. I needed to remember, to say goodbye, to process his loss.

With my mother I struggled to try to make sense of her last season of life. When my father died, she was letting go, she had no reason to live anymore. She had had an obsessive, quarrelsome, jealous relationship with my father and she was certainly not happy, but without him there was emptiness. She had lived the last few years closed in the house with him, in mutual misunderstandings, and she had invented that he had died in her arms, and that she had to join him. Then Covid19 arrived and it closed everything. The lack of stimuli, of sociability, have made her progress towards the total loss of autonomy, accelerated the degenerative process of the disease. She no longer has the memory of her present and past life, of her family, not even of the one who was crying for “my life”. One day she asked my sister: “Is my husband dead or gone?”

Until memory do us part.

Cecilia, My mother.

At 7 p.m. she wanted to go to sleep and stayed in bed until 8 a.m. I said goodbye to her before turning off the light with “I love you, Mom,” and she replied by lifting her chest and saying, “me too,” and it seemed that the answer came from deep within her, then she added: “I live only for you.” And it was true.

Patrizia Riviera was born in Milan and lives in Bergamo. She began taking photographs in 1992. She is a professional social reportage photographer and has published several books and editorial features, including “Liberamente in Patagonia”, an exhibition and book curated by Roberto Mutti on the journey to Patagonia of a group of people with mental health issues. “Captivi”, a collective exhibition and book edited by Gigliola Foschi on youth issues. “L'Inferno degli angeli“ (The Hell of Angels), a book on pedophilia edited by Massimiliano Frassi with photographs of Romanian street children. “Teatro Stalla, animali, uomini, dei” (Stalla Theater, Animals, Men, Gods), a book on an experimental theater where professional actors, people with mental health issues, and animals perform together. “Finchè memoria non ci separi” (Until memory do us part) on senile dementia published by Witness Journal.

Her work, summarizing twenty years of photographic work on mental health, “La Liberazione della Follia” (The Liberation of Madness), was exhibited in 2023 at Fotografica, Bergamo Photography Festival; in 2024 in Brescia, Rome, Genoa, and Inique (Peru) for the BIS exhibition, Biennale Itinerante del Sociale; at the Ministry of Culture in Rome, as part of the 2024 Mental Health Festival, “100 Basaglia. Dal Manicomio alla Cura” (100 Basaglia. From Madhouse to Care) with Gian Butturini and Carla Cerati.

She is also a research photographer with expressionist influences. In recent years, her images have focused on the Earth, which she photographs with a sense of nostalgia and loss, respect and wonder. She began exhibiting in 1996 in New York and Seattle in a collective exhibition of Italian Women Photographers. Since then, she has continued to exhibit her work in solo and group exhibitions in major Italian cities, the US, and Europe. She has won several awards, including the NEW POST PHOTOGRAPHY? AWARD, MIA Photo Fair 2020. Her photographs are in public (Bibliothéque Nationale de France in Paris) and private collections.

Since 2003, she has been conducting expressive, educational, and therapeutic photography workshops, mainly in the psychiatric field.

She is a member of the Association of Italian Women Photographers.

All images and text © Patrizia Riviera