In The Picture of the Yellow Sun Lisbeth Johansen searches in the memories of the complicated relationship with her seriously ill father. A man who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and eventually died alone in his apartment only 57 years old. The ambivalence is present throughout the book, is it really possible to understand in retrospect what happened? Nevertheless, Johansen tirelessly searches further, in the family archive, among photo albums and her own portraits of her father. But above all by repeatedly trying to recreate the memory of a work of art painted by her father. A painting of a yellow sun that she is no longer in possession of.
“After my father died I found one of his paintings among his things, a picture of a yellow sun with the title Resurrection. In the beginning I liked the picture and kept it. But in the long run I found it too painful, and one day I just threw it away. I’ve regretted it many times since.
The only thing I had left of my father’s when I started work on this book were some old photos I took of him the year before he died, a photo album I found among his things, and one of his paintings that I was lucky enough to find in the attic. The painting wasn’t that good, it looked like a palette he had framed. But the back of the painting was interesting, so I took a photograph of it and broke it into fragments.Using the fragments I tried to recreate a picture I had lost – the memory of the man who was once my father and who I saw gradually falling apart and disappearing as I grew up.” – Lisbeth Johansen
Specifications: Breadfield Press ・ 2020 ・ Softcover, swiss bound ・ 20,6 x 31 cm. / 80 pages ・ English / Danish ・ 9789198174779
