Kelwyn is not a person, but a place, a family, a home. This is, in a way, the story of my relationship with my grandmother, Mémère, Barbara Cashman, at present. But it is also, in a way, the story of our family, memory, and carrying forward our past into the present and future.

In approaching this project, I began exploring my family’s lineage and story from a decidedly removed perspective. Addressing generations-old photographs and documents harbored for years in the archive that is the basement closet full of photo albums at my grandmother’s house, I was looking to trace specific experiences of ancestors I never knew via the objects of theirs that we still have today. A cookie recipe, a desk, a gold ring. But this, ultimately, felt disconnected.

Yet the point of convergence for all of these stories was my grandmother, Mémère. Over time, I recognized further and further how she carried the role of being our family’s storyteller, passing on the knowledge of our lineage and history to the generations following her own. And I came to accept that she can no longer be our storyteller. I am doing what I can to carry on those stories, our family’s history, the journeys and fables and maybe-half-truths of Aunt Carrie and Old Man Thompson and Dr. Hebert and Daisy that taught us our morality as we listened to where we came from.

The house itself, 13 Kelwyn Drive, is the stage of this storytelling, the home since 1963 where my grandparents built their family. Documenting the house in its transition only felt natural, passing our story from one generation to the next.

And as Mémère has told the stories of so many in our family who have come before and after her, these photographs, essays, and recordings are my starting point­­­­ to tell her story now that she cannot.

View the full project here.