I pick through your ashes, hope they sober up my head.
I handle these tiny fragments of what is left of my father, impossible to see the detail with the human eye alone. I observe them through the magnifying lens of the camera. A mix of grey and white rocks almost impossible to differentiate, magnified however, each grain is absolutely unique. I begin to recognise them for the uniqueness that is hidden. As I shot through the night I began to recognise the small pieces of ashes as individual.
One by one I sift through the ashes; it is repetitive, monotonous, never ending. I set myself the impossible task of photographing each grain. Quantifying the grief, handling the material his body has become. Whilst counting and photographing - at the same time coming closer to my own mortality. I couldn’t always be with him when he was alive, as I cannot photograph every piece of his ashes; as I pick them up, their fragile state makes them spilt, increasing the number. It is the impossibility of the task which is the curiosity, the draw, I do not know what it would mean to finish photographing them. I am not sure if I would ever be satisfied.
Chloe Rafferty recently completed the BA Hons in Photography at London College of Communication. She lives and works in London.
Chloe was awarded the Photoworks BA Student Prize for her degree show work.
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Chloe Rafferty, Untitled 1, from the series I pick through your ashes, hope they sober up my head, 2011
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Chloe Rafferty, Untitled 2, from the series I pick through your ashes, hope they sober up my head, 2011
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Chloe Rafferty, Untitled 3, from the series I pick through your ashes, hope they sober up my head, 2011
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2 reviews
Comments (2)
When I first saw Chloe’s images at the LCC degree show, beautifully presented in their elegant display cases, and perched delicately on the mezzanine corridor above the other rooms, I was immediately intrigued. I am easily bored by photographic typologies but this one really gripped me.
I had just been reading Edward de Waal’s novel The Hare with The Amber Eyes and the photographs depicted what looked like small stones that would fit in the hand like Netsuke and that equally referenced a tragic family history. Here were the magnified ashes of the artist’s father.
The photographs reveal each piece of ash as unique and this is emphasised by the expansive grid of small prints. Each image looks like a mineral sample from a natural history museum but represents a person – a father – reduced to his constituent elements. Their scientific clarity is exquisitely macabre.
In photographing thousands of these particles, Chloe says she has found a new intimacy with her dead relative and with her own mortality. She quotes Felix Gonzalez Torres: ‘ it is my attempt to have the physicality, the weight of him, to be able to handle him.’ Are these images any more removed from the lost parent than a traditional portrait?
Photographs evoke memory, history, death and loss by their very nature and I think this work engages with photographic theory whilst performing a heart-wrenching act of mourning. The images are presented unemotionally but it is this very remove that allows us to contemplate the horror of loss without it becoming unbearable.
Rebecca Drew
Photoworks
Amazing idea Chloe and really well shot