Phillip Toledano - Days With My Father

'Days With My Father' is an emotional photo journal, reflecting on the severe short term memory loss of Phillip Toledano's elderly father. He includes personal writings about their relationship, how it changed after the sudden death of his mother, and how they coped with the loss together despite his father not being able to remember the reason for her absence. The photographs are raw and beautiful, showing moments of vulnerability and pain, as well as cries of joy.

Toledano manages to throw fragments of humour in with the deep sadness of his father's rapid deterioration, and he does it with ease. The stories he tells show the wholeness of his father's personality, the ups and downs, the regret, the pride, the grief, and the confusion, all in one book. Toledano recounts his father's storytelling skills next to an image of him with his hand in the air, partway through an animated performance of an Italian character. I think doing this helps to establish the father's character, and makes the reader feel like they know him, or at least a part of him.

The book has such a strong personal narrative that it almost felt like a short film. I love the layout of a full bleed image next to a white page with a simple column of text, broken up into short sentences and phrases. It's written more as an anecdotal monologue, so as a reader you feel like you're being a listener, rather than an intruder on someone else's conversation. I really love this style of writing, and I'd love to be able to write that way. If I end up doing a zine for the outcome of this project, 'Days With My Father' is exactly how I want it to feel, with influences from Billie Blossom's zines.

I think the style of the photographs themselves is really interesting, as they mostly all follow the same pattern of a small depth of field, with the subject being centralised, neutral colours, and simple composition. Additionally to the many portraits, Toledano introduces photographs of personal items that everyone can relate to, including notebooks, a nightstand, and a lonesome toothbrush kept in a drinking glass. I think this is what makes the book so raw and emotional, as the artist creates a bond between the reader and the character through his photographs, coupled with personal writings and reflections.

The theme of family is definitely prominent in this book, as it focuses on the relationship between a father and son. It's approached with sensitivity and love, which are qualities that I want to come across in my work. Toledano chose to write about his father from his own perspective, making the viewer feel personally invited to hear the story and thoughts of the father and son. The anecdotes he tells help the reader to understand and relate to their relationship, as he balances light-hearted humour with more serious accounts of his father's deterioration.

How am I taking this artist into consideration for my own work?

I would like to experiment with his style of portraiture, and since I can't actually photograph my grandparents due to them either being dead or living far away, I could try to do the same type of photo narrative with myself or someone in my bubble. I'd prefer to do it with my own items to tie into the original concept and into the theme of identity that I'm looking at, but I think self-portraiture would be too difficult with the limited equipment I have, especially in the candid style that Toledano uses. I also really want to work on my writing skills, and I really love how Toledano writes about his father, so I'm going to try to use this in my own work. I have limited memories of my grandparents, but I'm going to write as much as I can about them and try to do it in a similar style to Toledano. I'm hoping I can get some interesting anecdotes about my deceased grandparents from my living relatives, and I'll do this through interviews. I also want to look into a photographer called Billie Blossom, as their photo zines have a similar structure and they're a source of inspiration for me.