I took the photos in this collection between 2001 and 2007, in a house in a neighbourhood called Goes, in the town of Montevideo, Uruguay.

The house had belonged to a prominent family of Uruguayan politicians around the middle of the last century.

During the first half of the 20th century, Uruguay and Argentina were experiencing a golden age with moments of splendour and powerful, vigorous economies.  This was in total contrast to the situation in Europe and Japan, suffering from the consequences and economic devastation brought about by successive wars. Then, from the 60s onwards, Uruguay began a slow and progressive decline which culminated in an economic, political and social crisis of major proportions in 2002.   It was to affect the entire region.    Since then, the little nation, once dubbed “the Switzerland of South America” has never been quite the same again.

For my part, at the beginning of this century, I was in my final years studying architecture at the University of Uruguay and was gradually devoting myself more and more to photography as a means of personal expression.    This was my first series of photos where the social realities are making their appearance.

This was the context during which I took my first photographs in the house, where I was initially interested in the way certain processes of urban and social decay were reflected in this space.

The photographs show the effects caused by the passage of time in a family, of the oppressive loneliness in a house slowly taken over by absent presences.

And as if my lens had focused on a specific detail, I began to concentrate on the everyday life of the one member of the family who still lived in the house:  the daily routines of a shipwrecked being, immersed in a world of objects and memories that refused to die.    A being in the twilight of his years, confined in the solitude of his lodging, a man forever locked in his memories.