Wendy Aldiss
Wendy Aldiss’s My Father’s Things is a deeply personal and heartfelt series, featuring 9,000+ photographs of all of her father’s possessions taken after he passed away.
The artist’s father, Brian Aldiss, was a famous writer and artist, and the installation first shown at the Occupy the Void exhibition shows his study desk and bookcase strewn with photographs of his belongings. The pieces of art depicted on the walls are of his artworks. Creating My Father’s Things was a way for Aldiss to cope with the upset and adversity of her loss, but also to celebrate his life and keep him connected to the space and surroundings. Working in his house, handling and photographing each object, then replacing it, was integral to handling the loss of such an important person in her life.
While depicting just one person’s property, this body of work has a universality. Having to sort out the things belonging to one’s deceased loved ones is an experience that touches the lives of many. It reminds us too of our own possessions, the importance we attach to them and what will become of them after our own passing.
Installation at Occupy the Void exhibition the 14th edition of Photo50 at the London Art Fair
An installation of My Father’s Thingswas created and exhibited at the 2020 edition of Photo50 at the London Art Fair as part of the Occupy the Void exhibition. It is also featured in the Limited-Edition newspaper publication of the same name, available exclusively from LANG priced at £20. To purchase please contact us via email.
Wendy Aldiss: My Father’s Things
Pannoval Press - 256 page hardcover
£35 / £40 signed
Following the death of her father Wendy Aldiss realised that, in a way, she could continue to photograph him – by making images of his possessions. Wendy went on to photograph absolutely everything that he had in 2018, right down to his paperclips. This labour of love and grieving has resulted in a fascinating and complete catalogue of the items owned by a man of 92yrs; a writer, poet and artist.
The book is a beautifully designed selection from the 9,000+ images Wendy Aldiss took. It is a 256 page hardcover book containing full colour images and fold-out plates, with a foreword by renowned novelist Christopher Priest and an essay on ‘Dwelling in a Writer’s Home’ by Dr Margaret Gibson academic and writer.
What others said about My Father’s Things:
“Brian Aldiss was a deep and brilliant writer, and over the last seventy years he helped shape Science Fiction, as an editor, as a critic, as a commentator, and by example. When Brian stepped off the stage, I am glad Wendy Aldiss was able to chronicle who Brian was and the space he had filled by the things he left behind him. Paints and cards, books and records, press clippings and convention badges and maps and old photographs and authors' copies of books, belt and braces and shaving brush. Even the bullet that hit him in 1945. And the cumulative effect is one of grief and remembrance, of celebration, and, at the end, of love. It's like being welcomed in. It leaves me wondering what I'll leave behind.” – Neil Gaiman
Brian Aldiss was a brilliant writer and a fascinating man, with a hinterland that extended in a thousand directions, some of them not on any human compass. Now we have a chance to see into his rich and varied life, through the lens of his daughter Wendy, whose inspired idea it was to photograph pretty well everything that was in his possession when he died. I couldn’t have imagined what a vivid sense this would give us of the man, the writer, and the life, nor what splendid compositions all those myriad objects could make in the right hands. This is a book to pore over and marvel at, beautiful and funny and moving. I loved it. - Philip Pullman
"These photographs document the overwhelming ordinariness of the material detritus of lives, even of unusual lives. Yet the camera transfigures these ordinary traces, makes them appear luminous with interest, even exotic. Under Wendy Aldiss' incisive eye the heightening and theatrical propensities of photography come into play. Details rise up and grab attention: they insist on significance, overwhelming the ordinary in transcendent ways" Elizabeth Edwards