Counting Rituals is an act of remembrance — an attempt to reconstitute the life of the author’s mother that began to surface only in the aftermath of her passing. Gerkman’s photographs, much like the family archive he weaves into the narrative, suggest a certain compulsion, if not obsession, with collecting, archiving and piecing together the bits of a life close and familiar yet utterly strange. The gesture of meticulous archiving becomes synonymous with the process of grieving.

Simultaneously, the series is a tender portrait of his mother and the close relationship she had with nature, and the author’s anticipation of losing her. Throughout his more recent photographs, the motive of a house becomes particularly present, evoking the notions of absence, instability and a fundamental change of his most intimate surroundings. Every day between Christmas and Valentine’s day, Gerkman waited that somebody would come and look after his mother. During long walks, he returned to the same places time after time, looking for traces. A deeply personal narrative that inevitably reminds us of the strangeness of death — its power to conclude everything from love to the most mundane rituals.

Text by Ana Zibelnik