Touching Photos of a Grandfather’s Life Documented Through the Possessions He Left Behind

By Alison Nastasi

Feb. 1, 2014

Going through a deceased loved one’s belongings is an emotional process. One artist we learned about on Co.Design made it the center of her photo series, Inheritance. Andrea Tese created a visual documentation of her grandfather’s life by photographing groups of his possessions. We see objects that were familiar to his everyday routine (pots and pans), keepsakes he tucked away in boxes (locks of hair), and other markers of the late man’s identity. “Despite the potential sentimentality of the project for the artist and her audience, Tese’s photographs are abstracted by her deadpan treatment of the subject matter, organizing the items into grids, piles and sometimes playful arrangements that allow the objects to be assessed individually as well as en masse by the audience.” The images recapture beautiful moments in one man’s life, frozen in time, but also remind us of the ephemeral nature of our own existence.