Death of family pictures

Self-mutilation in photographs I first encountered photography at the age of 47, after losing my only son in 2005. Using photography as a means, I was finally able to confront my grief. However, since then, I have been spending my days with something inside of me that I cannot understand. I have been thinking that I need to go deeper into myself and "visualize" my own "loss" from a different approach. 　For this project, I printed past family photos on instax film, which is called "instant photography". There are several reasons why I decided to use this equipment. First, I thought that this instant photo, which can usually only print one copy of a photograph, would be a good match for the uniqueness of past memories that cannot be changed. Secondly, the uniqueness of my son's belongings, which will never increase, also seemed to be very suitable for me to capture the image of him in a photograph. However, the faces in these family photos have all been smashed. Usually, tampering with past memories is symbolic of the desire to erase the memory. Photographs (by printing them) make the formlessness of "past memories" into an object, and instead of being able to tear up and throw away the memories in our minds, we can do that. So why am I trying to destroy my past "memories of my happy son”? Do I want to erase my happy past?　I asked myself. The answer came to me immediately. 'That's not true.' 　Then why is that? The sudden death of my son made me "frustrated and angry" that I couldn't take any more fun family photos in the future, but at the same time, I realized that the fun memories of the past had unwillingly changed into something completely different, from "something I love" to "something I most don't want to remember or think about. I wanted to express this in these photographs. My son has not changed at all, but he is becoming a monster in my memory. I have such fears that I don't want to admit. It's sickening and scary, and these pictures are it. and also I wanted to bring back memories of my past by hurting my photos. In the same way that self-mutilation confirms that I am alive and well. Yes, I'm sure I had a son. The collage under the photo is "a page from a picture book that my 4 year old was reading. It is pasted as a collage under the instant photo as a metaphor for the reality that my son was alive. There is on ly one photo, and only one page of this picture book. I really wanted to express that.