Photographs of places, people and the traces they leave behind. Walk through slowly; every work has a story.
Five exhibitions, one walk. Each room holds a series and the stories behind every photograph. Enter any of them, in any order.
Houses that were left, and what stayed behind
Nobody lives in these rooms any more, yet none of them is empty. Paint holds the outline of a frame that hung for thirty years. A door still opens the way a hand taught it to. I photographed each room in the light it was built for, and waited until it felt like someone had just stepped out.
Enter the roomPresence, measured in empty seats
A chair placed beside a window is a sentence half spoken. Someone sat there to wait, to read, to watch the road for a familiar walk. These photographs are about the people who are not in them.
Enter the roomFamily photographs, and the hands that hold them
Every family keeps a box. Inside are faces that some of us are now too young to name. I spent a year opening those boxes with the people who own them, photographing photographs, and writing down whatever they remembered while we looked.
Enter the roomPortraits of elders, and the years they carry
Our elders are the last people who remember certain songs, certain streets, certain names. I asked each of them to sit with me and tell me about the happiest day of their life, and I made the portrait while they were remembering it.
Enter the roomOrdinary streets, before they change
Cities forget faster than people do. A corner shop, a tree in a courtyard, a man carrying a basket home: none of it seems worth photographing until it is gone. These are ordinary afternoons, kept on purpose.
Enter the roomIf forever is impossible in time, perhaps we can create a little of it through the moments we choose to preserve.
