Cyndra MacDowall: Index

Cyndra MacDowall’s latest body of work, Index, is a series of large black-and-white photographs that reference the use of photography as a medium that catalogs the passing of time, memory, and morality – all condtions that are recorded on the body and experienced in remembered spaces.

The work of this Windsor-based artist springs from the recognition of her own morality, with the hallmarks of aging seen daily on the body, and experienced in the process of grieving her father’s recent death. The series includes images of objects that reveal how the body shapes what is worn and repeatedly touched, images of physical change, and spaces and locations of former imtimacy and occupation, including houses, streets, gardens, and locations of childhood play. In this way, MacDowall’s photographs reflect the kinds of images found in the family album or archive. The subject of these photographs, however, is the background context of family album portraits – yards, trees, water, streets, and edges of the home that usually surround the portrait subject of the family photo. For the artist and viewer, these familiar locations stimulate recollections of past exprience that were not photographed.