Stranger Things

2022 - Addison Road Gallery

Stranger Things began with a collection of 35mm slides recovered from a friend’s home following the 2022 Lismore floods. I restored a series of damaged family memories and returned them to my friend, but these slides had deteriorated beyond repair. Rather than attempting to recover the images they contained, I began to consider the slides themselves as objects.

The work explores the material nature of photography and the different physical forms through which photographs exist. Photographs are not simply images; they are carried by paper, film, photographic chemistry, digital files and the hard drives on which those files are stored. Each substrate has its own vulnerabilities and its own relationship to time, damage and memory.

I scanned, enlarged and printed the damaged slides, allowing the traces of water, mud and deterioration to remain visible. The original family photographs have been overwhelmed by the flood, transforming personal images into material evidence of loss and change. The series is also a reflection on the personal loss experienced during a natural disaster — the destruction of photographs, memories and belongings, and the profound disruption of lives and homes caused by the Lismore floods.