Madeline Wilson, Studio 101

Photographing abandoned sites is a solitary venture. Deep silence wraps around me as I stoop to peer through the viewfinder of the camera mounted on the tripod. No generator sounds from deep within the bowels of the building. Fluorescent lights do not hum above my head; the furnace fails to provide vibrations through the soles of my boots. I’m wearing my hiking gear, and as I move through the building, I feel the security of my weatherproof clothing and my daypack, water bottle snugged into the side pocket. When I walk, my boots crunch through broken glass, and years of dust and decay. These sounds amplify my interruption, my intrusion on the space, and they remind me to act with grace and deference to what happened here when the place was alive.
Photographing is a means of preservation. Finding small moments, splashed color within these spaces, like sparks of memory just outside our reach, remind us that they once harbored dreams and lives and the objects of our desires – now forgotten.
My current project involves combining images of abandoned spaces with family photographs from nearly 100 years ago in an attempt to make sense of ancestors unknown to me. As I struggle to fill in the blanks, I create narratives based on secrets and lies: bits of information overheard in dark hallways, scraps of stories shared then quickly hushed. Secrets is a series of images fabricated in a vacuum of disinformation in an attempt to create a family history.