Requiem For A Son (self-published artist book, 2020)
I could tell this story through my tears about all the things I am going to miss about him, or tell it with joy and wonder about the things we did, and that he did.
— Sandy Lloyd’s journal entry, 19 February 1997
Project Statement
I never want to forget.
In 1970, my first son was born. In 1996, he left this world by his own hand. Between these two moments lies a lifetime of love, loss, and the fragile act of remembrance.
This body of work draws from the vanitas tradition—a 16th-century artistic practice rooted in Flanders and the Netherlands, where still-life paintings served as meditations on mortality. Like those artists, I use symbols: a skull to evoke life’s impermanence, objects to channel absence into tangible form. But here, every item is a relic of him. These black-and-white darkroom prints capture what he touched, made, or cherished—a worn guitar pick, a childhood sketch, a letter folded and kept. Some pieces bridge connections to those who loved him; others are silent witnesses to the boy I knew and the man he became.
Creating these images has been an act of excavation. Each photograph unearths memories—not just of his laughter or his struggles, but of the echoes he left in others. Friends, family, strangers who glimpse these works often see their own stories reflected.
Vanitas translates to “vanity,” a reminder of life’s fleetingness. Yet this project is not about surrender. It is about defiance—against time, against erasure. Through these frames, I hold what remains.
I never want to forget.
