Ashlee Whitehead

The work transforms my father’s photographic archives into tactile, multi-coloured cyanotypes that trace memory, loss, and inherited views of rural masculinity. My father passed away five years ago, and with his death, I lost the chance to ask him about his side of the family. The archive reveals a distinctly masculine perspective view on rural life, with men camping and exploring, while women remain unseen, tending to domestic duties and caring for children. My family lived in Penola, a rural town in South Australia, yet this landscape feels distant to me, having grown up in urban Sydney. The figures within these photographs appear ghostly and unfamiliar, relatives connected to me by blood, yet distant through time and memory. Through layering and toning, I move beyond the traditional Prussian blue, constructing tri-coloured cyanotypes that echo the complexity of memory. The work reflects on absence and presence and the silences that linger within the family archive.