Emanating from an ongoing collaboration between my two brothers and myself, Sound of silence (2000 - 2020) is a collection of photographs and exchanges that explores the nature of portraiture, the notion of the muse, and the layered quality of photographic experience. Over the past twenty years, the camera has become a vehicle for uprooting and reinventing conventional family roles and relationships, establishing new narratives that are charged with a tension between what appears to be ‘real’ and imagined. The settings for these photographs are the suburban homes and neighborhoods in the United States where we grew up and where my family lives today. These literal places shift into performative spaces where perceptions of different aspects of human existence, specifically relating to childhood, identity, loss and memory, are questioned by means of a photographic system.
Images and pieces of conversations mutate throughout the many layers of the work, which, over time, has become less and less constrained to the photograph’s edge, spilling over in the form of installations that emphasize elements inherent to photography such as texture, process and the passage of time. The resulting compositions, arranged on a wall, a table, or suspended in the exhibition space, consider the different points of view at play in the phenomenon of photography. In Sound of silence, the photographic activity, stemming from a charged silence, becomes a language in and of itself.
Rachael Woodson ouvre au public ses albums de famille. Elle expose les photos de ses frères qu’elle a pris pour modèle durant plusieurs années. Sa série Sound of Silence relève ainsi de l’autobiographie, du rapport entre vie privée et image publique. La maison d’enfance sert de décor et de prétexte à la mise en scène ; l’artiste évoque ses souvenirs sans nostalgie et nous entretient d’un rapport à l’enfance par l’image : grandir et se voir grandir dans le regard des autres. Sans naïveté aucune.
Henri Guette pour The Steidz, 2018