A Testimony for Dear

I cannot recall clearly enough how my childhood was.

There are only fragments and scattered impressions left, yet somehow, across these years, I began to recognize myself through the hints and traces I’ve accumulated with my camera since the birth of my nephews.

I was never really a “kid person.” At the beginning, I wasn’t into children at all, let alone babies.

Still, for reasons I can’t fully explain, I got certified as a babysitter. Eventually, while taking care of Mathys and Théo (and documenting them, initially just for the sake of making a family album) I realized something unexpected:

Through photographing them, they were revealing to me the shape of memories I thought I had lost, memories that never fully formed. And I saw how those memories, even in absence, had continued to shape me.

Before I knew it, Mathys and Théo became the gravity of my life. When I was lost, I found them, and in doing so, I began to find myself. Over time, the images became more than just moments. They became testimonies.


Testimonies to the lingering uncertainties we carry, about memory, identity, and the passage of time. They are the evidence of how I perceive my own becoming, how I see who I am, and perhaps who I long to be. As I watched them grow, I was also witnessing my own impermanence. In this quiet act of witnessing, I learned something about compassion.
I began to place my feet back on the ground, to the soil of presence, to be with the people around me.

To testify, then,
is not only to remember,
but to be present,
to love,
and to see.

Ding Herng LEE 李定衡 日珥, written at 22/04/2025.