Not long after the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in the UK, Bath-based photographer Will Green lost both of his parents to the virus over the course of just two months. House-bound like many others, and also suffering from long Covid himself, his gaze turned inward, and he began documenting small details around his home.

What had originally begun as a project about the city of Bath eventually became a photographic reflection on love, loss and legacy. The result of this series has been released as a book titled Death and Other Belongings, published by Gost.

“At the time, a project was not a conscious decision. It was more a process of keeping emotionally stable and experimenting with processing techniques and being distracted when possible,” recalls Green. “I am now aware of how many of the images are close-ups. At the time this was not the intention nor considered. Looking back, [this is] because I was focusing so hard on the small details of home and a closed environment, rather than the real world.”

Composed primarily of still life imagery, Green’s monochromatic photographs focus on the mundane, and yet upon closer inspection, there are messages – conscious and subconscious – to be found about death, decay and the passing of time: the stiffened body of a dead mouse, decaying apples in dried leaves, the ghostly structure of an insect’s web.

Human presence in the book is vague, fleeting and, at times, abstract – matted hair on wet bodies, two funeral caskets, the imprint left in a well-worn seat. Green captures these details and scenes with intention, and yet, given the context of the images, there is a pervading sense of passiveness, of looking without really looking; explained by Green’s realisation only later on that many of the images follow a similar style.

In total, there are 48 images in the book, and across the series we are given an insight into Green’s mindset during this period. Naturally, when confronted with such loss, we move between moments of introspection and moments of pure distraction, and both are present in the series.

“Death and Other Belongings is not so much a record of the external events, but rather a narrative study of the emotions and anxiety that came with the circumstances and the realisation of our fragility and mortality,” writes Green in the book’s closing text.

Death and Other Belongings by Will Green is published by Gost; gostbooks.com