Lost Faces

‘Lost Faces’ is an ongoing textiles-based exploration of family memory, absence, and the fragile traces that remain when personal histories are lost to time. Working from a collection of inherited photographs, many of which are unnamed and undocumented, I use textile processes to re-imagine and reconstruct the lives of ancestors I will never know. With no living relatives able to identify these individuals or share their stories, the photographs become both evidence and mystery. Fragments of a family narrative that can never be fully recovered.

My practice begins with the photographic image as an artefact. These faded portraits, snapshots, and studio photographs carry the marks of age and survival. They have outlived the people they depict and, in many cases, the memories attached them. Through stitching, layering, embroidery, and textile manipulation, I seek to bring these faces back into visibility – not as acts of historical reconstruction, but as gestures of recognition and care.

Textiles provide a particularly resonant medium for this work. Cloth has long been associated with domestic histories, inheritance, and acts of preservation. The repetitive, tactile nature of stitching becomes a form of attentive looking, allowing me to spend time with each image and establish a connection across generations. Every thread marks an attempt to bridge the distance between the present and the past, while acknowledging that some gaps can never be filled.

Rather than striving for photographic accuracy, I embrace the ambiguities and distortions that emerge through textile translation. Missing information, faded details, and uncertain identities become integral to the work. Threads obscure as much as they reveal; surfaces are built up and worn away. In this way, the pieces reflect the nature  of memory itself – partial, fragmented, and continually re-shaped by imagination.

The title ‘Lost Faces’ refers not only to individuals whose names and stories have disappeared from family knowledge, but also to the broader experience of genealogical loss. Many families carry silences, ruptures, and forgotten histories that leave traces without explanations. By focussing on these anonymous ancestors, I invite viewers to consider their own relationships to memory, inheritance, and belonging. The work asks what remains of a life when the stories are gone, and how we might honour those who have been forgotten.

At its heart, ‘Lost Faces’  is an act of remembrance. It does not seek definitive answers or recovered biographies. Instead, it creates a space where absence can be acknowledged and where unknown lives can be held, however briefly, in the present. Through textile processes that are both intimate and labour intensive, I transform archival photographs into material encounters, allowing lost faces to emerge once more and reminding us that every image contains a human presence worthy of attention.‘Lost Faces’ is an ongoing textiles-based exploration of family memory, absence, and the fragile traces that remain when personal histories are lost to time. Working from a collection of inherited photographs, many of which are unnamed and undocumented, I use textile processes to re-imagine and reconstruct the lives of ancestors I will never know. With no living relatives able to identify these individuals or share their stories, the photographs become both evidence and mystery. Fragments of a family narrative that can never be fully recovered.

My practice begins with the photographic image as an artefact. These faded portraits, snapshots, and studio photographs carry the marks of age and survival. They have outlived the people they depict and, in many cases, the memories attached them. Through stitching, layering, embroidery, and textile manipulation, I seek to bring these faces back into visibility – not as acts of historical reconstruction, but as gestures of recognition and care.

Textiles provide a particularly resonant medium for this work. Cloth has long been associated with domestic histories, inheritance, and acts of preservation. The repetitive, tactile nature of stitching becomes a form of attentive looking, allowing me to spend time with each image and establish a connection across generations. Every thread marks an attempt to bridge the distance between the present and the past, while acknowledging that some gaps can never be filled.

Rather than striving for photographic accuracy, I embrace the ambiguities and distortions that emerge through textile translation. Missing information, faded details, and uncertain identities become integral to the work. Threads obscure as much as they reveal; surfaces are built up and worn away. In this way, the pieces reflect the nature  of memory itself – partial, fragmented, and continually re-shaped by imagination.

The title ‘Lost Faces’ refers not only to individuals whose names and stories have disappeared from family knowledge, but also to the broader experience of genealogical loss. Many families carry silences, ruptures, and forgotten histories that leave traces without explanations. By focussing on these anonymous ancestors, I invite viewers to consider their own relationships to memory, inheritance, and belonging. The work asks what remains of a life when the stories are gone, and how we might honour those who have been forgotten.

At its heart, ‘Lost Faces’  is an act of remembrance. It does not seek definitive answers or recovered biographies. Instead, it creates a space where absence can be acknowledged and where unknown lives can be held, however briefly, in the present. Through textile processes that are both intimate and labour intensive, I transform archival photographs into material encounters, allowing lost faces to emerge once more and reminding us that every image contains a human presence worthy of attention.