In 1970, Luuk van Raamsdonk's (NL) grandfather disappeared without a trace. When he eventually returned, he never offered an explanation for his absence. Investigating this family secret, Van Raamsdonk finds a clue in the family archive that leads to Elora, a small village in Canada, where his grandfather had a secret relationship while his grandmother, back in the Netherlands, was pregnant with his father.

More than fifty years later, Van Raamsdonk's father also had an affair. Though separated by time, both men grappled with conflicting desires and the consequences of their choices, leaving traces that continue to shape the family today. My Sweet Elora reflects on a family history in which tensions echo across generations. To understand it better, he travels to Elora himself to photograph the landscape and explore the places where memory and imagination intersect, searching for traces of a history that had been consciously hidden.

The book brings together new photographic work, material from the Wellington County Museum & Archives and the artist's personal family images. Landscapes, self-portraits and everyday objects become part of a visual investigation into absence, longing and the patterns passed from grandfather to father and on to son. It includes an essay by historian Karen Vallgårda, 'The Ambivalent Politics of Family Secrecy and Exposure', on the tension between revelation and concealment in personal histories.