Capturing the mourning light amid the soft, sad shadows of death

'I have what some would call a chequered past,' says photographer Jeffrey du'Vallier d'Aragon Aranita, dressed in a suit and cowboy boots.

Which is something of an understatement. When he was three, his parents were blown up in a car in Spain, and his life seems to have been exposed to turmoil ever since. Aranita has responded by putting his experiences and emotions to good effect in his work.

The sudden death of his Hong Kong-born wife, Kelly, in September 2000 moved Aranita to create 13 Chinese Walls, an exhibition of what he calls 'sutras for my wife'. A small selection of the more than 3,000 pieces are showing at the Volkswagen Fotogalerie this month as part of City Fringe, the Fringe Club's annual festival. The multimedia installation, which will travel to the Biennale du Paris this year, includes photographic prints, projected images and sonic compositions he made while he was in mourning.

Aranita was born in 1954 on Moorea island, in French Polynesia, to a French diplomatic attache father and a Japanese- American biologist mother. After their deaths, his grandmother - an ogamisami, or trained spiritual communicator - raised him in Japan.

In the late 1970s, Aranita dropped out of the University of Hawaii to join United Press International as a photojournalist, covering anti-narcotics activities in Southeast Asia and the Americas. Six years later, he sustained a severe injury on the job that forced him to spend eight months in the hospital, and left his throat paralysed and his hearing damaged. At the age of 28, Aranita moved to New York City, where he entered Columbia University's master of fine arts photography programme, then successfully worked in the commercial field for 18 years, until suddenly deciding to become a private banker. After seven years, he gave up banking to return with his wife to Hong Kong.

When she died from pneumonia, Aranita sought solace by taking pictures. He started a project he describes as 'just something to do ... I started walking and taking pictures'. He methodically documented more than 3,000 images and recorded more than 200 hours of audio while travelling through Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.

'Dealing with death is an important part of life. Everybody dies. Whether you find out early or late, you still have to deal with it,' says Aranita. It would be easy to conclude that he was using art as therapy, and Aranita is matter-of-fact about the subject. 'Art is as therapeutic as you want it to be,' he says. Yet he speaks generously of his ogamisami grandmother for helping him confront death from an early age. He still calls her 'a mediator of the voice of the dead'.