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The Presence of Absence | John Hesketh

The Presence of Absence is a photographic exhibition by John Hesketh that explores loss and the grieving process. The title names a paradox every mourner knows. What is gone still shapes the room. The project began in 2012, as Hesketh revisited a stucco wall of a Cinderella house in Anaheim, California, which he shared with his wife and artistic partner, Peggy. The wall was ordinary. Years of weather had given it a quiet texture. Using a flashlight taped to a long stick, he created complex light abstractions on the wall using long exposures to capture the interplay of performance and memory. The wall became a stage. Each exposure held minutes of movement the camera alone could register. His body moved in the dark, tracing shapes he could not see. What looked like a quiet home at night was, through the lens, alive with gesture.

Peggy was editing her first novel while taking chemo. Their personal lives had become very small between the brain fog and the rewrites. She inspired him to explore as many worlds of color as he could find in that single wall. Their conversations, as artists, shifted between the success of her book and the images that would not blend with color. After Peggy's passing in 2018, John returned to the wall to finish their conversation. The images they had talked about became his passage of grief. A meditation on the presence of her absence. The project spoke without color, far from its original intent. The absence of color felt honest. It matched the quiet of those first years. "These black and white images coalesced into a language of light to find my way back," he reflects.

He did not rush what came next. Grief has its own timing. Over time, vibrant colors reentered his work, influenced by flowers in his new garden. The blooms came before he was ready for them. Sweet peas. Iris. Dahlias. English rose. Luminous layers now blend with fresh colors sampled photographically from the beds he tends. "Now I can embrace her absence," he reflects, "grateful for her presence that lingers within my life."

The Presence of Absence honors the cyclical nature of loss, exhibiting both black-and-white and color works. The images ask the viewer to lean in. Each visitor brings their own loss to the work. What they find there is theirs to keep. The wall, after all, was never only his.

Anonymous

Memory

May 5th - 30th 2026

Reception: Sun May 17th 2-4pm