Peter Pflügler

Now is not the right time

This started out as a story about my father’s suicide attempt. When I was two years old, he went into the woods with the intention of never coming back. This project was an investigation into the traces of a well-kept family secret. While I was revisiting my parents’ trauma – its places, objects and memories that I could not call my own – I found it here, inside myself. My body always knew. This is no longer a story about a suicide attempt. This is about the impossibility of secrets, about what we are sharing when we hide. This is about pain inflicted out of love and the complexity of silence. Mum, Dad, this is your trauma, that you kept wrapped up in countless colorful blankets and yet unknowingly handed over to me in a loving embrace. I will carry it with care.

Biography:

Peter Pflügler is a visual storyteller currently living in the Netherlands and Austria. His work centres around the dynamics of secrets, intergenerational trauma and silence. He studied photography at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague.

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Untitled [Now is not the right time], 2020