Shadowy Memories

A Photographic Reconstruction of Women’s Work in a Remote Community

Abstract

My creative photographic practice investigates the isolation inherent in a remote farming community. Access to consumerism, media, health, education, and social interaction were all hampered by isolation and remoteness. In many cases, they still are. My work suggests this geographical and social isolation further supported the division of labour into traditional gender-defined tasks. As a child, I perceived clothesline shadows as beautiful, untethered images that existed in a twilight realm somewhere between a rural woman's mundane daily labour of washing and the utilitarian purpose of wearing clothes to keep warm. These shadow memories came to represent the essence of transient experience. The four images included in this paper are examples of my photographic art-making practice that focuses on the production of photographs to reveal the sense of purpose, solace, and connection that daily rituals such as clothes washing offered women in remote communities of the past. These communities can be understood as crevice-like because the inhabitants were geographically isolated and, as a result, often resourceful, independent and, to an extent, unwilling to completely embrace the limited popular culture and consumerism they were exposed to. I consciously chose to print in black and white as a way of connecting to a past photographic aesthetic. In the digital darkroom, my work allows me to bring simplification and order to a profusion of long-term visual memories. These crevice communities of the past are explored through unconstrained childhood memories of clothesline shadows. Thus, my creative practice attempts to highlight the power of visual imagery to find identity and meaning in long-term memories.