"Draped": Women absorbed in the house

EVERY DAY PHOTOGRAPHERS AROUND THE WORLD looking for new ways to tell stories or to capture what we previously did not notice. We choose interesting photo projects and ask their authors what they wanted to say. This week is a series of "Anonymous Women: Draped" by photographer Patty Carroll, who has been researching American culture for many years, the theme of the house and the place of the woman in it.

I started taking pictures when I studied graphic design in college. We were given a compulsory photo class, and then I was hooked. In the end, I graduated from the department of photography of the Illinois Institute of Technology. It was a completely different time in terms of society and in photography. A color photo was just beginning to gain momentum, and I loved it with all my heart. We were taught to use photography to express emotions, and since then nothing has changed for me. My current work involves private issues that are close and understandable to most women.

At the heart of the work of any artist is a combination of his personal experience and psychological experiences. Mine mainly concern the house: leave the house, come back, stay at home or need it. There were several places in my life that I could call home, and then my husband and I also moved to England. And there I missed my American home very much. As soon as you leave, you immediately become aware of your roots. All my work has since been devoted to American culture. I still live in England, where I am known as Mrs. Jones, but I don’t take my local home as real and struggle with the feeling that no one here really knows me.

All this made me think hard about the value of the house. The house has become for me an important topic, an object of creativity, a topic for reflection and a mystery. Home is a myth. Home is comfort or at least a familiar place to go. Houses are the most dramatic moments of our lives. In the first year we were asked to write an essay about our home. I did it from the face of a fish living in an aquarium — even then I tried to hide from others. I have been drifting all my life somewhere between the real world and my inner world, full of dreams and nightmares. In my projects I try to combine these two worlds and often use female images in combination with home entourage - this has already become part of my artistic language.

In these photos, real women are hidden behind the folds of the fabric. A woman is an indispensable part of the process, even if her figure is difficult to discern. These are all portraits of different people. My goal was to make women invisibly present in the photographs and be part of this powerful, powerful concept of “home”. As they say in America: "Home is where your heart is." And this phrase has everything.