The House

Sofie Berzon MacKie returns and photographs in black and white, The House, her family home in London. The house symbolizes and holds everything she lost, all that she left behind when she came to Israel as a seven year old child: the furniture, the smell, the memories, the things spoken or whispered between its walls, the stories told and her mother's fingers holding a book and reading from it, the special light coming in through the windows. A whole life packed into a suitcase, sentenced to be forgotten. During her last visit to the house, Sofie writes: "A knock on the door echoes through all four floors of the house. When the heavy door opens, that same familiar and special smell of the house rises. It has not changed even after all these years. The smell is of wood and people, and London's cold air passing through the house for 184 years. That smell seems to come from the wallpaper adorned walls and wooden floors. A soft greenish carpet stretches from wall to wall, winding up and down the stairs. The floor slightly creaks with each step taken across the wooden beams. The old grandfather clock stands in its place in the corner, so does the grand piano and the tall armchairs. A present was hidden for me in one of them on the last Christmas before we left. Narrow and steep wooden stairs covered with a long faded carpet lead to the upper floor. And behind two doors- the rooms where Gal and I grew up. On top of the fireplace in the living room lies a photograph of my mother and me, a tender baby.... All that time it feels like she will be waiting for me behind the next opened door. I dreamt of her standing at the door opening of the large living room with her long fair hair, silently watching us. On December 2012 when my little Anna woke up and climbed up and down the stairs, four generations of my family passed through that house. On February 2013 the house was emptied from the last of its things, and the black door was closed." For two years Sofie gathers object after object, searching through her father's attic, and photographs the little things she cherishes, survivors of that other time when her mother was alive. She holds on to a hairbrush, ballet shoes, wooden rocking horse, anything that can take her back there, to that lost place that has no name or language and is like a pit of loss, like a phantom pain that never eases. She searches for a source of warmth in the dark, after a sense of belonging. We do not dwell on those banal everyday objects until they are forced out of our lives. Sofie's photographs touch a deep and old place within us. Surrounding us with softness and compassion. She shows us a dim memory that an object or ancient piece of furniture just might return to us, give it life