Elegy Of A Time Past

It's hard to describe the feeling of saying goodbye to a place that had belonged to our family for more than 75 years. My grandparents moved in 1946 to a three-bedroom, government-subsidized apartment in the center of Pamplona in northern Spain. They lived there with their 11 children. My parents moved into this apartment when they married and had my brother and me while living there. The apartment was on a fourth floor with no elevator and my grandfather climbed the stairs until he was in his 90s. The block of buildings surrounded an old market, and I would stand on my tiptoes on the windowsill to see the hustle and bustle of everyday life. After my grandparents passed away, my father stayed in the apartment by himself, preserving their room as they had left it. He turned the apartment into a museum, cramming the walls of the rooms with paintings and collecting all kinds of fascinating objects. The brutal isolation of the pandemic caused my father’s mental health to decline into dementia. He was moved to a nursing home and we had to return the apartment to the government. These photos are an elegy to a time past—a farewell to a place that contained the history of my family.