Wall Stories

The architecture of the house plays an important role in giving our memories meaning and context. The home is where we make plans for our lives – the memories form blueprints in our minds of our experiences and the places we have lived.

Photographs of the events become the memories, which in turn construct the stories of our lives and histories. The home is often the backdrop to key moments and experiences and thus it becomes the background of the photograph. The photograph gives the memory context showing not just the ‘what’ but also the ‘where’.

The work contends that the architectural link to memories is an important one – the presence of a house in a photograph gives it context and place.

‘Found’ photographs and negatives have been used from the artists’ own families, taken from key stages of life. These have been layered with floor plans of houses, both personal spaces and historic drawings. The work has been composed digitally and hand printed using the cyanotype process – traditionally used for producing architectural blueprints.

Inspiration for the project was drawn from the novel ‘House of Leaves’ (Mark Z Danielewski, 2000) and references in ‘Poetics of Space’ (Gaston Bachelard, 1958) which examines the domestic places that shape and hold our thoughts and memories.

A house without memories is just a space, it becomes a home when we fill that space with memories.