I never knew my father and now he is dead. A few years ago, I realised just how much the course of my life and personal identity had been dictated by his absence. A Familiar Place is an ongoing body of work that I started when he was still alive, as a response to questions about my own identity.
These images seek to explore the fragile boundary between presence and absence through a concealed narrative, one that offers a glimpse of intimacy but ultimately withholds the important details. The photos depict places of personal significance whose emptiness conveys a sense of arriving too late, reaching a location after the event has taken place. The portraits, on the other hand, are testament to those who were there.
Perhaps this work is my fragmented counterpart to the story I know of my father; one which reveals as much as it conceals. He appears in one image. His face is redacted. This is how I have always known him, there but not really there.
