A very touching book by Wilfrid Esteve, entitled “Les héros ont la vie courte” (Heroes Have a Short Life), has just been published by Éditions Bessard. He sent us this text:
A ten-second sentence during which I realized that my life would never be the same again. Ten long seconds to think about trivial things, about regrets, about what was essential. Ten long seconds to understand that I would no longer be the father I had imagined I would be.
On July 1, 2007, Fersen, 6, and Eva, 4, left Paris to live 900 km away. The distance that now separates us is equal to the bond that unites us. Their mother has always traveled extensively; until then, this strengthened the relationship I had with my children, but this time her departure separates us.
A project then took shape. Their childhood was intertwined with the memory of my own and the separation, following the accidental death of my father when I was 10. I photographed what I could not express otherwise: knots that sometimes strangle or entangle.
Facing this new relationship allowed me to let go, and the photographic imprint, which focused on my life in their absence, allowed me to make visible certain aspects previously considered private.
This project brought together several media. Beyond photography, produced using different cameras and formats, it also combines drawings, texts, correspondence, and the creation of a notebook. Its title is a metaphor: my children didn’t have time to kill the father; the hero’s life was too short.
Time has passed on this series, which began nine years ago. Its interpretation constitutes a family novel and an individual adventure made up of personal memories but also photographs of loved ones.
As it progressed, the series, like me, passed through several stages: at first, it attested to a context, authenticated wounds, and ratified scars. Then I no longer photographed “for the other,” but “for myself.”
Since the father is never as we imagine him, he is condemned to be imperfect and fallible. This series perhaps reveals that there are only fathers, subjects of singular stories which, juxtaposed, end up drawing a more subtle reality: the father is always a mosaic of images blending the real and the imaginary.
Wilfrid Esteve
Wilfrid Esteve : Les héros ont la vie courte
Éditions Bessard
https://editionsbessard.com/product/les-heros-ont-la-vie-courte-limited-edition-80/
