Will you dance with me?
But you don’t dance.
Will you sing with me?
But you don’t sing.
I Imagined It Empty is a delicately layered work and an intertwining of several narratives. It is the story of a building that is imbued with the human desire to believe it is more than just bricks and mortar.
A house.
A home.
Call them what we will, our need for physical reminders, the reassurance of some sort of permanence and validation that we were indeed “here” at all elevates these inanimate structures to the custodian of memories and the harbinger of laughter and tears, of love and frustration for generations, from sunrise to sundown, from cradle to grave.
“When we bought our house no-one else wanted it. It doesn’t have a garage, a paved driveway, a basement, more than one bath or bedroom which is why many people undervalued the house. It was also cluttered when we looked at it, but I immediately imagined it empty and knew it would be beautiful”
Ruth Lauer Manenti
The intertwining of memory and loss lays at the heart of Manenti’s gently heartbreaking narrative.
There is the desire to snatch moments from the ether and tether them to the bricks and mortar, the plaster and paint that for so many years will have played silent witness to the irreplaceable humdrum of family life.
Grinding, repetitive, ordinary, glorious
and ultimately, completely precious family life.
This is the parting kiss from a daughter to her mother.
The images in I Imagined It Empty, cocoon and embrace each other and like an orchestra performing the most delicate of requiems, take memory, grief and longing, crushes them together and as through the eyes of a child, cry’s the tiniest diamond of a tear.
I Imagined It Empty is not a book that announces itself loudly, it is possibly a body of work and subject matter that will leave some cold or maybe just make them want to move on, but the realities and inevitabilities of life can be prone to do that.
Ultimately, however it is the crushing reality of losing one of the most important people in her life that has provided arguably the most moving aspect of Manenti’s narrative.
Perhaps the intimacy of a rare photographic dialogue, also provided comfort at a time when her mother was close to passing.
It seems that as she neared the last few months and weeks of her life, Manenti was allowed to photograph her normally camera shy parent.
Simple moments of every day life framed and captured with a lightness of touch and loving respect, all presented in a dream like muted monochrome as she is pictured moving around her house.
This lightness of touch is reflected in the delicate handling of the design by Ramon Pez. The cloth covered boards, warm textural stock and elegantly simple placement of each image.
Another waltz performed to perfection.
A house can keep a memory alive, it can make you feel safe and through it’s very walls, appear to exhale moments that pirouette and float, that whisper of family and those beloved no longer with us.
But a house can’t embrace you, or tell you that it loves you.
For that you need you remember to make the most of those that are still with us.
Because nothing is forever.
Will you dance with me?
But you don’t dance.
Will you sing with me?
But you don’t sing.
I will, from now.
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