Patricia Howard's project 'Unknown Ancestors' investigates a largely unrecorded period of Irish history, particularly the Great Famine, a time when photography was scarce.

Growing up, Howard had limited knowledge of her family's past due to her father's reluctance to discuss their Irish heritage, influenced by societal stigma.During a residency in County Kerry, she photographed rural landscapes using simple, restrained methods, embracing the environment's limitations.

These images were later transformed into cyanotype prints on handmade semi-transparent paper, a process that emphasizes both the land and its historical absence.

Howard also incorporated natural materials like wool and gorse flowers, as well as personal and domestic objects such as clothing, hair, spoons, and rosaries, to evoke the lives of those who came before her.Many of the prints include embroidery, connecting the work to a lineage of women and reflecting her own childhood experiences.

Through these careful, tactile processes, Howard creates a visual language that honors memory and absence, allowing the past to be felt rather than merely represented.Her work demonstrates how landscapes, objects, and craft techniques can serve as vessels for ancestral stories and cultural heritage.