JPM
France, July 2022–Present


JPM holds space for grief and a photographic dialogue with my late father who unexpectedly passed away on February 20, 2022 at age 68 in Toulouse, France. While we were close at the end of his life, I sadly did not know him much since my parent separated when I was two years old.

He was born in Algiers during the Algerian War of Independence, which he experienced first-hand until he moved to France in the early 1960s with his parents and three sisters. He became a photojournalist at Agence France Presse (AFP) in Paris and covered French and international news.

The project fuses pictures of his house as I found it in July and August 2022, after being unable to travel to France for three years. The house was intact but I had little time to sort through it and sell it before flying back to Los Angeles in late August 2022. Grief struck hard. 

Additional material comprises: his personal documents, extensive archive of scanned negatives, landscapes he loved, 3D scans of his personal belongings, his–often incomplete–photographic gear, and archival research about the Algerian War of Independence.

Sequencing a collection of such scattered elements is a cathartic way to cope with the silent inner implosion I have experienced grieving him.

This project is developed in the context of the 2024 Penumbra Foundation Long Term Photobook Program, and will culminate in a book dummy in December 2024. 







Copyright © 2024 Yogan Müller. All rights reserved.