Three trucks filled with 8,8 tons of items to be discarded.
70 square meters of storage occupied by a grand piano, paintings, prints, glassware, pottery, jewelry, photographs, 192 boxes filled with books, sewing equipment and furniture.

These are items sorted out of a late family member’s 150m2 apartment in a foreign city. A week I joined my family in emptying this house, all the while capturing it. The family member and his wife that used to live here was not someone I had known before their passing, even though we were relatively closely related. This person had a complicated personality that made it difficult to retain relationships with the people closest to him.

Their house was nothing like I had seen before, and I can only describe the rooms I saw as those of a hoarder. An insatiable thirst for art, intellect and general historical and classical beauty. Even though many of the things he was interested in interested me as well, I had a hard time feeling any desire for the objects just by the sheer quantity of it. The beauty of it all was lost in the discomforting feeling that one would have to lead a life amongst the clutter.

Hoarding is a psychological issue, and researchers connect it to having poor relationships with family and friends. Without making a diagnosis, this correlation is something I see represented in this person. Although his wife was the exception in the sense that she did not leave his side despite his sometimes self sabotaging behavior. Going off of what the apartment told me about their relationship, it didn’t seem like a balanced one. As a haute couture fashion designer, she had but a small closet space with no windows to do her work. While his quite large office was off limits to her, seperated by a lock. When she was asked about why she would bear this, she was quoted saying she saw it her mission to make this complicated man’s life easier.

Time had stood still here, as the place was left in an emergency. Not to be opened again up until a year later. The coffee left on the table made it seem like yesterday since people lived there, yet time showed its traces through the dead plants that decorated the house.

This photo series was for me a way to document all that I had learned and felt during that week. It was strange to so intimately meet a closely related family member through their belongings and their behavior towards it. It made me question my own relationship to my belongings.