​'Searching for your Shadow'

In 1967, aged 15, I unexpectedly

wandered Paris for a week.

More than fifty years later,

I returned to explore

my mother's home district,

the 15th arrondissement.

'Searching for your Shadow',

the photobook which emerged from this,

is a re-treading of steps,

a book of memories and resonances.

‘Searching for your Shadow’ is a self-published photo book exploring memory, history and urban geography.

Like my birth and adoptive parents, I am a migrant with links to Ireland, Poland, and France, as well as my home country, Britain. My (adoptive) mother was also the child of migrants, from Poland. She was not born in Paris, but was always from Paris.

This photo book consists of an exploration of my mother’s home district (the 15th arrondissement). This is one of the most everyday areas in Paris, with little there to attract the tourist or the sightseer.

These are also the streets I trod when I spent an unexpected week in Paris in 1967, aged 15. I spent the week walking, visiting galleries, observing, and absorbing. I did not have a camera at that time, but I now understand that that week was pivotal to my visual education. I learnt to not passively look, but to actively see.

Later in life, I became a photographer.

This project is heavily influenced by the writings of Patrick Modiano (Nobel Prize for Literature, 2014), whose writings are the fragmented, lateral stories of memories, history, and the urban geography of Paris.

​Crucially, Modiano's characters often attempt, and fail, to make sense of memories of the past. This failure is implicit in their search, as it is in mine.

The fragility of memory is thrown into relief by my mother’s struggles with dementia in the latter years of her life.

This slippage of personal and familial memory greatly informed this search for the intangible.

International Awards 2021

Prix de la Photographie de Paris (Px3) 

'Searching for your Shadow' was awarded a Bronze Medal in the Book/Monograph section.

Budapest International Foto Award (BIFA): 

'Searching for your Shadow' was awarded an Honourable Mention in the Book/Fine Art category of the Budapest International Foto Award 2021 (BIFA)

​

Slideshow

of the photographs in

'Searching for your Shadow':

​In addition to the above images, the book also contains maps of the 15th arrondissement from my mother's 'Plan de Paris', two of my mother's identity cards from the 1940s, an epigraph (by Patrick Modiano), a dedication to my mother, and an Afterword, detailing the development of the project, written by myself, discussing the influences, the development, and realisation of the project. 

Key texts are in both English and French.

As a result of a successful Kickstarter campaign at the end of 2020, I was able to produce a limited edition of 200 hardback copies of the book. The book pages measure 18 x 18cm

The book is dedicated to the memory of my mother and was self-published in April 2021.

All copies are numbered and signed.

Copies cost £25.00 (€25.00), plus shipping at cost. 

​'Searching for your Shadow'

Launch and Exhibition

Centrespace Gallery, Bristol

The official launch exhibition of

'Searching for your Shadow',

This was held in April 2021, 

at Centrespace Gallery, Bristol, UK. 

This was the first week we were allowed out

after COVID restrictions were lifted.

​'Searching for your Shadow',

the launch exhibition - an informal

guided tour by Chris Rydlewski:

Review: Bristol 247 magazine

Here is a link to the review from Bristol 247 magazine:

https://www.bristol247.com/culture/art/photography-exhibition-embraces-

identity-history-memory-and-geography/

'Searching for your Shadow'

at the

Vestibules Gallery, Bristol,

June 2022