yesterday home

Yesterday Home documents poetic personal engagements with past childhood homes. By, investigating five houses, the images consider themes of place and memory to pose questions about the similarities and differences between space. As the memories begin to overlap, it is as if myself and these sites have outgrown each other. This research intends on investigating how we feel when returning to a space, both emotionally and physically. Therefore, how can the photographic crossings of multiple dwellings begin to paint a picture of the concept of home, regarding a child who moved through structures during the period of a family divorce?

The book’s structure provides a loose narrative, where the viewer loses the line between the individual homes, essentially making one hybrid home. Through the use of handmade techniques (120 film, and contact prints), my sight becomes guided by trace. Known as lumen prints, these obscure markings are printed on a transparent paper within the book, allowing the engagement to become one with the sites, obscuring in a way that is prominent with memory. Each book features an original lumen print embossed into the cover. These prints have developed in the physical sites, allowing a trace of the experience to stay with the physical books.

2021

Yesterday Home, First Edition Print 2021, Poetry, Copy Table Images

I lay this sheet of photographic paper
to capture the experience
of being in this space one last time.
I want to be immersed in the present,
making the memory more reachable.

the contact prints lay in the sun,
under the earth that was once mine.
as the paper fades and exposes,
it captures the denser imprints.
like memory it’s patchy,
revealing some but not all of the story.

I am left with the traces,
allowing all the spaces to merge into one.
I welcome in my hybrid house.
unsure of where my past life ends,
and current begins.

the confinement of one structure,
spreads itself over several.
further allowing the concept of home to find itself,
within the uncertainty.

we lived in a space that felt endless.
I can see clearly how the home was laid out.
my room across from my brother’s at the top of the stairs.
as the days move by the memories begin to fall into one.

before we knew it,
we were moving house to house.
leaving each with no remorse.
this house was no longer ours.
it became dad’s, where we would go in the weekend.

everything began feeling temporary.
a space where you didn’t think of
where you were in the past,
or where you are going in the future.
the present became how we would navigate.

in this moment, being back in this space
I can feel the presence of the past.
a wave of old emotions,
and interactions fall over me.
yet I can’t distinguish the individual days.

my mind begins to erase what is in front of me.
replacing the unfamiliar interior,
with our own.
for a moment I am nine again,
watching my mother cook
whilst my father is asleep on the couch.

it is comforting yet distant.
this is a life we have all outgrown,
therefore, this house will always be a part of our past.

a house we were promised forever,
lasted just over ten years.
as I stand in this space it feels foreign,
when just yesterday I called it home.