verbreverb:

ECHOLILIA:

Echolilia is a photography book by the prolific photographer Timothy Archibald. The work is an exploration of father and son, Eli Archibald, whom was diagnosed with Autism. Below is text from the book, above are some of my favorite photographs from the project. You can buy the stunning and awe-inspiring book here at Timothy’s blogspot. 

“Sometimes I wonder.

Open Closed.

Late afternoon is when the electronic noises start. The sounds of an electric train accelerating and leaving the station, the sounds of an engine shifting into high gear, the beeping of a garbage truck when it is backing up. The sounds of a hydraulic lifting mechanism. The beeping of a microwave oven. The sound is very loud. Can you make those noises any softer please? No, I can’t. That is the volume that the machine creates. It can’t be turned down. 

The electronic noises have been around since he was three. 

Later that year came the robotic voice: the voice that sounds as it it is a recorded message being spoken through a faulty public address system. Flat monotone, metallic sounding vocal, it is not a robot voice as much as a recorded announcement stated clearly and slowly. It begins with “May I have your attention please. All passengers…” and always ends with the words “Thank You” stated through the static.

Dear Tooth Fairy from now on you may take my teeth love Eli.

The doors will be closing

Please stand clear of the doors.

The doors will be closing

Please stand clear of the doors.

The  phrase is repeated obsessively whenever we encounter a moving door. At the library, on a bus, at the supermarket. It comes from deep wihin and interupts common conversation. It’s stated as an impulse, a reaction, not as a collection of thoughts expressed. It is repeated in exact tone and rhythm without meaning. This is echolilia. 

The memorization of subway schedules. The tracking of buses and their schedules in real times. The affected style of speech, with a sing son up and down pattern. The focused attention of complex mechanical gears: bus doors, elevator doors, sliding doors, multi-plane doors that fit into each other. The mechanical rhythms and complex pattrns of the world seem to comfort and ground him.

I come home and the house is quiet. My son Eli looks different. The noises are gone. The non stop talking that usually filles the house is gone. The edge, the staccato everything, the aggressive dynamics are absent. He has a fever. He sits at the table.

Can you come into my room? I want you to hear this song. It’s number 11.

I sit on the floor and he falls onto the bed. The illness has taken away all of these things that are so evident and on the surface every day. The fever has equalized us. The music fills the room, its dark, we both whisper the lyrics. We are both 19 right now. No child no parent. Big anthemic album, power chords and choruses, we both take it in. Our eyes never meet… we never glance over to see if it’s all right, if it’s cool. We are both in the music… the appreciation is insinctual; it is the equalizer here. 

I can’t make our some of the lurics but I look them up after he falls asleep, looking for clues or at least a passage for my project. I find one but I’m too embarressed to share it: it’s too adolescent, too easy to exploit. Giving the moment the respect it deserves, I just let it go.”