No signal

“Before…”. This is how the letters my parents wrote to each other 40 years ago often ended. Communication using ordinary notebook sheets was an important way for them to support each other and express their feelings at special periods in their lives. My father was in the hospital for a long time after a car accident, and my mother was several times in the maternity hospital. This correspondence covered a period of several years. Some time before their wedding and before my discharge from the maternity hospital — the third child in the family.

Rereading these letters now, I try to imagine that romantic and sentimental relationship. In my more conscious age, witnessing their imperfect marriage, I recall infrequent manifestations of tenderness and care for each other.

Long years of living together have formed the habit of being together, and age- related physical features (the father cannot talk after a stroke, and the mother does not hear well) again contribute to a more sensitive attitude and attention.

The broken neural connections that caused the physical features of the parents leave their mark on their communication with each other and with the outside world.

With the help of a computer neural networks, archival photographs and photographic documentation in the present time, I combined several realities and segments of life in order to try to recreate those very images of “Before…”, despite the once lost signals.