The Unforgetting by Peter Watkins. Published by Skinnerboox.
I don’t honestly know how to write about Peter’s book. But I know I’ve not seen or felt one like it. It seems stripped bare, but is incredibly full at the same time. The book itself has no bells, whistles, nothing in the careful design to call attention to anything but the photographs. So they are before us, raw, building complexity as one turns each page. Peter’s eloquent essay is placed late in the book, a reveal of the clues we slowly receive through the photographs. We know we have been permanently changed. Memory is a complex abstraction tenuously tethered to reality. Through the recollections on the death of his mother in his childhood, Peter shows us as much about the nature of memory as he does about loss.
Terri Weifenbach was born in New York City and resides in Paris, France. Bookmaking is central to Weifenbach’s artistic practice. She has authored more than nineteen titles. Most recently published is Des Oiseaux: Terri Weifenbach by Editions Xavier Barral, 2019. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, having received the distinction in 2015. www.terriweifenbach.com