Rhiannon Wiggs- All That Remains
All That Remains is an autobiographical series that explores my childhood toys and combines how they have been collected, accumulated and controlled over my lifetime with the impact they have had. For the past 21 years the toys have remained as an untouched archive in a ‘memories box’ in my attic, however over time, most of them have slowly been thrown away, broken or no longer needed. By photographing the ones that remain, I am intending to depict these items as evidence of my early years and the forgotten memories that have become recollected.
As a child I gave my toys personas and characteristics that made them who they are to me, allowing them to become individual but unique, despite there being thousands similar. The series captures the presence of an individual and the transition from childhood whilst exploring the toys that have been left behind or forgotten about in an almost morbid fashion.
My series “All That Remains” revolves around childhood toys, in which I aim to question what a childhood toy is, or does, for the developing child whilst attempting to photograph the early life of a youngster through their toys, primarily by exploring the toys that remain from when I was younger. By creating affectionate portraits of these inanimate objects, I aim to document them singularly as a toy, but collectively as they have all impacted me whilst growing up. My focus is to explore how these toys have been given their own, but imaginative, identity and/or personality that was created specifically for them by myself or the child that played with them. By coupling the concept of memory with archive, whilst considering these specific toys, I hope to prompt the viewer to consider their childhood memories, enabling them to remember their toys and the ways they were once played with.
My attempt with the series is to allow the viewer to consider, not only the childhood toys as objects themselves, but the forgotten memories that they evoke. By photographing an individual toy in darkness, I have tried to trigger imagination, incorporate the notion of isolation and being forgotten and help the memories resurface. Each individual can interpret the images differently, as if each toy in each photograph means something different to the observer and it is this relationship between object and memory that I have attempted to explore. Through questioning what a childhood toy is and represents to the baby, we can agree that they are all different materially, but the same internally.
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