INTRODUCTION

Before my first visit to Corsica, I read W. G. Sebald’s posthumous fragmentary texts on Corsica. He had been writing a book about the island, but it remained unfinished at his untimely death. Sebald became my guide to Corsica. I went to the places he writes about: the forest of Aitone and massif of Bavella, to a hotel on the red cliffs above the village of Piana, the nearby beach and the cemetery. I remembered my own dead. I looked for places so beautiful that if I were Corsican, I would want them to be buried there.

My father was an amateur photographer. He gave me my first camera. When my mother was widowed at the age of 37, she enrolled in an art school and had four years of fulfilment. I am a photographer because of my father, but because of my mother I became an artist. This series is a tribute not only to the Island of Beauty and to my favourite author, but also to my mother, Ulla Brita Brotherus, née Sommar (1944–1985).

SPECIFICATIONS

Photographs: Elina Brotherus
Concept and design: Ilona Iottu, Dog Design
Hardcover
17,0 x 24,0 cm
77 photographs (32 color photographs, 40 reproduced cyanotypes, 5 black and white photographs)
176 pages
Paper: Fedrigoni Arena Smooth 170g/m2
Texts: Elina Brotherus, Quotes by W. G. Sebald
English / French / German / Finnish
Publisher: self-published
Publication date: July 2022
Print run: 700
Printed and bound at Jelgavas tipografija, Jelgava, Latvia
ISBN 978-952-94-6585-9

The series Sebaldiana. Memento mori was commissioned by Centre méditerranéen de la photographie, Bastia, Corsica, in 2019. The book has received support from the Arts Council of Finland and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.