‘Dear Dad’

In this series Sophie creates a visual letter to her late father Gordon ‘Jay’ Hughen. It narrates the piecing together and reflection upon his life, as well as also acting as Sophie’s visual sounding board to process her feelings of loss and presence. Every image within this project , old or new, has not only explored parts of Sophie’s father, but parts of herself too, as a daughter and as an artist. Visually Sophie has tried to answer the questions she carries about the dad she never knew, but feels the absence of everyday, through the thoughtful use of family archives, vast and empty landscape imagery, and reflective self-portraiture. Within this correspondence, Sophie questions whether it is possible to miss something you never had and connect to the intangible.