Not long ago, my mother sold her childhood home. It’s been an overwhelming and exhausting journey to restore the place. Originally built by my Great-Grandfather and Great-Grandmother, over time it has quietly decayed away. Once loved, the dust took over. Books, unopened boxes, and hoarded objects filled the rooms and hallways. Paint began to peel off the walls. Forgotten inherited possessions, hidden beneath it all. Restoring a place that is filled with so many memories, bright and dark, melancholic and vibrant, has tested my mother’s perseverance. However, the devotion I witnessed her giving this home while preparing it for its next life has made her true strengths shine. And I couldn’t be prouder. Throughout the years we spent working on clearing the rooms bit by bit, I occasionally pulled out my camera to take photographs of the ever-precarious moments that symbolised the end of its journey for my mother and our family. During this slow process we encountered familial possessions once assumed lost and reminisced about our cherished memories from the past.

Off the Well-Worn Path is a photo documentary narrative exploring the physical and emotional connection to my mother’s childhood home. The project explores the journey of gathering possessions, clearing and restoring the home to create room for new inhabitants and memories. Observing the relationship between the human condition, time, family and place, this project seeks to entwine the past and present history embedded within this dwelling through inheritance, regeneration and change.