SOHIE

ALLES HEEFT ZIJN TIJD / EVERYTHING IN ITS TIME

Belgium, 2024

 

Everything has its time...is the literal translation. It is my father's philosophical response to the sudden death of two cacti he had cared for over many years. This phrase carries a quiet wisdom about letting go of control and trusting the natural timing of life’s events.

Returning to the family home to assist my ageing parents, I realised I had never photographed there before. My childhood had always felt too close, too tangled to confront. 

The objects in the house had become silent witnesses to the far-away places my parents once lived in and the lives they shared. Exploring the geography of the home, the work moved beyond its physical skin, revealing an intricate constellation of relations; an intimate, emotional landscape beneath the surface of daily life.

The distorted concept of memory as being absolute and static; the images exist in the in-between, in the fluid act of remembering. Our memories contract and expand, erode and transform; transcending who we are. Within the stillness of the image, I explore the disquiet beauty of this vulnerability and engage with my own transient existence.

Our domestic spaces and rituals act as gentle reminders of who we are, what we desire, hope for, love, and honour. We strive to preserve the home in a memorial timelessness — a museum of a life lived.