Addie Ryder

Adelaide Ryder is a photographer based in Salt Lake City with an MFA from the University of Utah. During her graduate school experience she fell in love with art education and sharing the creative process with other. She currently teaches photography for the U of U and Westminster College.

Her art keeps her close to home as she uses the house she lives in with her twin sister, as the backdrop for her visual narratives. This house that plays a crucial character in her imagery was once the home to her grandmother and great grandmother. Thoughts and memories of this specific place inspire her photography.

Artist Statement
I am a twin. With my sister, reflections and duplications dominate our existence, and permeate my art. My imagery intimately reflects our surroundings and life circumstances. I use the camera to make art because it uses reflected light to make a twin likeness of my reality, imagination, and memories.

1687 is the street address of the home were my sister and I live. There is no street name to add personality, just an assigned number. It is a cold numeric name for a house that is anything but detached and cold. For four generations, this house has been a part of our family. Like a sister or a mother, it has watched over the women who have made this place a home. It has borne witness to the uncommon bond of identical people living together mimicking the domestic acts of those who came before.

These images are taken from the perspective of the walls, floors and doorways. The low angles, looking upward at all the domestic busy-ness of life, are not the gaze of another person, but that of the room itself. The house is a character in our family’s story, and the place is a reflection of the lives it has protected.
A constant presence in the time of one family, these walls absorb the
moments made in their company. Sheltering a history, they are unnoticed sentinels – audience to the memories of the only family they have ever known.