Gone. creates a bridge between two distant times and places, articulating the feelings Beaven could not find the words for as a child. In the 1970s suburbs of England, Richard Beaven's world was abruptly altered when his father left the family. Just eleven years old, he was left with anger, confusion and resentment, while there was little space to process what had happened. The family simply carried on. Forty-five years later, a chance roadside discovery brought long buried emotions to the surface. In response, Beaven began working intuitively, photographing the people and landscapes he encountered around his adopted home in New York's Hudson Valley over the following four years. Rather than attempting to reconstruct his childhood or locate his past in a new place, he found in the valley a landscape through which unresolved memories could resurface. The Hudson Valley itself carries a history marked by conflict, loss and decline. Its traces of weathering, both in the landscape and among the people Beaven encountered, became an evocative backdrop for the work. Beaven describes the camera as having somehow led him through the making of the work, offering a natural way to revisit the past and use photographs to speak the words he lacked at the time. The project demanded an intuitive approach, working from the very core of the story; the process became as visceral and consuming as the resulting images. Throughout the project, Beaven worked with renowned British photographer Sian Davey as his mentor and editor of the final book sequence.
