The Essays — Index
Notes, investigations, returns.
The main content engine of Parallax House — long-form writing on memory, photography, film, identity, queer culture, philosophy, travel, and personal investigations.
Memory
The House That Exists Only in Memory
A meditation on memory, childhood, family and place. What happens when we return to a house we once knew intimately and discover that the house we remember no longer exists?
2026-06-09
13 min
Photography
The Photograph as Evidence of Absence
A meditation on photography, memory, loss and time. Why do photographs become more meaningful when the people, places and moments they depict are no longer present?
2026-06-09
13 min
Photography
The Last Photograph
A meditation on photography, mortality and time. Why do ordinary photographs become extraordinary when we discover they were the last image ever taken of someone we loved?
2026-06-09
13 min
Photography
Photography Against Forgetting
Why do we photograph? An exploration of memory, photography, archives and the human struggle against forgetting in an age of infinite images.
2026-06-10
13 min
Photography
Why We Keep Taking the Same Picture
Why do we continue photographing sunsets, lovers, children, trains and empty streets when billions of similar images already exist? A meditation on repetition, memory and photography.
2026-06-10
12 min
Philosophy
Roland Barthes and the Wound of Photography
An exploration of Roland Barthes' idea of the punctum and why certain photographs wound us. A meditation on memory, love, absence, mortality and the mysterious power of images.
2026-06-10
13 min
Film
What Chris Marker Taught Me About Memory
An exploration of Chris Marker, memory, travel, photography and cinema. What if memory is not a place we revisit, but a journey we continuously remake?
2026-06-11
13 min
Film
Why Tarkovsky Filmed Time
An exploration of Andrei Tarkovsky, memory, cinema and time. Why did Tarkovsky believe cinema's true material was not story, image or performance, but time itself?
2026-06-11
13 min
Film
The Diary as Cinema
What if a diary is not a book but a film? An exploration of personal archives, notebooks, photography, travel and the cinematic possibilities hidden within everyday life.
2026-06-11
12 min
Film
The Personal Documentary
Why do filmmakers turn the camera on themselves, their families and their own histories? An exploration of personal documentary as investigation, memory and the search for meaning.
2026-06-11
13 min
Memory
Evidence That We Were Here
Perhaps every photograph, every diary, every journey and every story ultimately attempts to answer the same question: what evidence will remain that we were here?
2026-06-08
12 min
Memory
Why Childhood Feels Like Another Country
An exploration of memory, childhood and identity through photography, travel and personal history. Why does childhood often feel less like a period of life and more like a foreign country we can never fully revisit?
2026-06-07
14 min
Photography
Why We Photograph the People We Fear Losing
Why do we photograph the people closest to us? A meditation on memory, family, love, loss and photography as an act of resistance against disappearance.
2026-06-07
14 min
Travel
The Places I Travel My Son To
A meditation on travel, memory and inheritance. Can a parent pass on places in the same way they pass on stories? An essay about journeys, belonging and the fragile geography of memory.
2026-06-07
14 min
Queer Culture
Photography and Queer Survival
An exploration of photography, queer history and survival. How images became evidence of existence, love and resistance for generations forced to live between visibility and secrecy.
2026-06-07
14 min
Photography
The Family Album as a Crime Scene
What if family photographs reveal less about what happened than about what was chosen to be remembered? A meditation on archives, absence, photography and the mysteries hidden inside family albums.
2026-06-07
15 min
Personal Investigations
The Photograph My Mother Didn't Expect to Find
A personal investigation into memory, photography and identity. What happens when a childhood photograph is removed from a family album and reappears in the world, waiting to be discovered by the person who once lived inside it?
2026-06-07
16 min
Memory
The People We Remember Incorrectly
Why do our memories of people change over time? A meditation on identity, photography, family history and the uneasy distance between the people we knew and the stories we tell about them.
2026-06-07
15 min
Memory
What Happens When Memory Disagrees With Reality
Can memory be trusted? A meditation on photographs, family history, competing narratives and the uneasy territory where recollection collides with evidence.
2026-06-07
15 min