What Might Have Been

What Might Have Been speaks to the grief we feel over things that could have been but never were. Stories that were snuffed out before they could even begin; hopes and dreams and expectations that never came to be. This photograph depicts the ashes of a book, burned in a cathartic expression of grief-filled rage. The burned pages, monochromatic and cropped closely, become an abstracted metaphor for life after the death of hope. Focusing on the texture of the feeling itself and allowing the viewer to fall into the pages of their own untold, unhappening stories.

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Cathy Ross is a documentary photographer and storyteller living on unceded Turrbal and Yuggera land in Brisbane, Australia, exploring themes of life, death and BDSM through a queer, autistic and ADHD lens. She holds a Bachelor of Photography (Honours) from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. Her major bodies of work include 'body rites' (2018), an exploration of women in BDSM through a feminist lens; 'Women of Vanuatu' (2018), a series of portraits and interviews of Ni-Vanuatu women discussing climate change and feminism; 'Incompatible With Life' (2020), a testimony of grief through poetry and photography made in collaboration with poet Jane Hightower; and 'the bare series' (2018-ongoing), a series of nude portraits presented alongside textual excerpts from interviews with participants exploring different aspects of the embodied human experience.

cathyrossphoto.com