Featured in Revel & Reveal, Advanced Diploma of Visual Art, 2024

Caitlyn Smith’s photographic work ‘Missing you’ explores how to bring a materiality to the ephemeral. That is, the recollection of the fragments of her memory; her family's collective remembering and representations of others’ lives through photographs. In this case, she investigates the rich life of her Granny, who recently passed away.
Challenging photographic truth with personal perception and remembering, she attempts to replicate these intimate moments through photographs from her family archive - taken by those who loved her most. Smith’s work brings forth the emotional resonance of nostalgia, a sense of urgency to retain memories and a fascination with memories that don’t belong to her.
This series's tactility and reworked nature search for a physical method to represent fading memories and attachments. To create the final iteration of this series, Smith went through an extensive experimental period, reworking versions of original photographs to create physically manipulated editions. This led to a joining of materials and processes to emphasise the many layers and variations of our memory. 
Cutting out the figures maintains a level of ambiguity and wonder to prompt feelings of familiarity and reminiscing. Replacing the negative association of removing others from photographs, Smith uses this process to represent the absence of her Granny. Using second-hand fabric, bedsheets, and various sewing techniques, she stitches together a family of memories to describe the weight and loss of a single person. 

Image by ©Maya Kirk