Mum’s Elna sewing machine fell silent years before she died in August 2017. In the grip of Alzheimer’s, there came a time when she looked at it and simply didn’t know what to do. From then, both the machine and the quiet, assured powerhouse of a woman who used it to make and repair our clothes and almost every household textile, fell silent.
Eight months after her death, I recorded these images of it frozen in time. Flash-lit to appear as tiny ice particles, the dust is merely dust. Bobbins, a silvery grey thread, needle and the machine itself all remained precisely as they were from the very moment when she last knew how to use it.
I call it Machine Silence. But it goes much deeper than that.
Oh God, Peter.