The father of a five-year-old girl suddenly dies of a heart attack at the age of 37. Through a meticulous description of the family’s photographic archives, the author questions memories, untangling truth from fiction, fantasies, and their memorial reconstructions. Émilia Stéfani-Law reconstructs a story—her own, her family’s—while reflecting on photography, its power, and its illusions.

This book offers a poignant testament to the photographic archive and its place at the heart of the home. In an era where material traces, such as photo boxes and albums, are fading away, the narrative invites us to reflect on the importance of preserving these images and what we do with them.

The image, that wraps from the front cover to the back cover, is an altered photograph of the author’s father. Through this retouching, the image becomes a trace, an imprint that evokes the fading of memory. The book is typeset in Mercure drawn by Charles Mazé.