Caitlin Maxwell – Shh! – Create* Inspire* Community* Art* Design* Music* Film* Photo* Project
A series of personal images focusing on matrilineal dynamics and the ways in which we are shaped by loss. Los Angeles-based photographer Kaitlin Maxwell grew up in South Florida and experienced the death of her father at a young age. Photography has always been a way for Maxwell to explore the world and find meaning and identity. Using natural light and a medium format film camera, Maxwell’s practice is an in-depth study of the human condition, rooted in the desire to understand what it means to be seen. It also serves as a window into her own life as she searches for connections. What began as an effort to understand the complexities of her relationship with her mother and grandmother evolved into a decade-long meditation on memory, representation, and loss. Here Maxwell photographed “places that were once unreachable”. Each photograph is a study of absence, of presence found in things we cannot see. The women depicted no longer exist, and these images become relics of past versions of themselves:
“The photographs are a collaboration based on vulnerability, each taking me back to where I started, in search of connection…. The death of my grandfather in 2021 felt like a closing bracket, the passing of two important male figures that set the stage for a body of work centered on women. After his death, my mother was transformed. The one who had been the object of my gaze, became a mirror. I saw her in the midst of my ongoing search, a daughter searching for her father.”
Kaitlin Maxwell entered and was shortlisted for our 2025 Booooooom Art & Photography Book Awards.
