Last week the Daylight/CDS Photography Award winners were announced. Sarah Sudhoff’s latest project stood out. Whether it is deep enough or lasting or I can’t say, but it stood out.

Sudhoff: “At the Hour of Our Death takes as its starting point [Phillipe] Aries’s observation that “death’s invisibility enhances its terror”. These large-scale color photographs capture and fully illuminate swatches of bedding, carpet and upholstery marked with the signs of the passing of human life. The fabrics which are first removed by a trauma scene clean up crew, are relocated to a warehouse before being incinerated. It is in the warehouse that I photograph these fragments stained with bodily fluids. I tack each swatch to the wall and use the crew’s floodlights to illuminate the scene.”

Illness, Female, 60 years old. Archival Pigment Print, 2010. 40 x 30 inches

Other series in Sudhoff’s portfolio are worth a look, notably Repository which is a self-portrayal project about Sudhoff’s cervical cancer in 2005.