How much do we know of the histories of the families we are born into? With each death, so much is lost. Family photos provide answers, but throw up questions. They hold keys, and they hide secrets. What is reality and what is myth in the various tales that circulate, often modified to suit the teller’s viewpoint? Using old and new techniques, ‘Ripples in Time’ is a series of images that combine original family prints with modern ones, reworked pinhole shots of ‘Pettifer’ addresses, and poems and texts inspired by stories told and information gleaned about three generations of my mother’s family. Her grandfather was a master baker in Lee High Road eventually bankrupted by the sons who worked with him. Her father was a butcher, also in Lee High Road, before he enlisted. After four years in India, he was sent to France in 1914 and badly wounded a month before the end of the Great War. She was born in Catford and grew up in Bellingham’s ‘Homes for Heroes’. She remembers the bombing of London in the last war when she worked as a telephonist for the inner cabinet. However, this project is as much about what is forgotten as it is about what is remembered.
The images featured in the exhibition 'Family Photos: Reworked', at Viewfinder Photography Gallery 8-25 April 2010