Modern Heirlooms is an ongoing portrait series exploring ideas of legacy, beauty, and value in a contemporary world shaped by excess, speed, and disposability.
Rooted in the visual language of historical portraiture, the work draws on compositional restraint, controlled light, and a sense of stillness traditionally associated with Old Master painting. These references are deliberately set against materials drawn from modern consumer culture, objects that are ordinarily overlooked or discarded.
Transforming everyday materials found in the studio such as packaging, coffee filters, frame cardboard, and ventilation tubing, I reimagine Renaissance-inspired headpieces and collars for the modern era. Works include The Balzo, created from leftover ventilation hose, an Anne Boleyn-inspired headpiece made from headphones and gold drawing pins, a sculptural ruff built from coffee filters, and an Elizabethan collar fashioned from a repurposed tablecloth and cardboard.
By reworking and recontextualising these materials, the series asks what we choose to preserve, and why? What elevates an object, an image, or a person to something worthy of our attention? And how might contemporary life be recorded with the same intention once reserved for formal portraiture? What began as a creative experiment became a way to question what we keep, what we discard, and how the ordinary can become extraordinary when treated with the same level of attention once reserved for painting.
The sitters are presented with quiet authority. There is no performance and no imposed narrative beyond presence itself. The portraits are not about trend, spectacle, or commentary, but about creating images that feel considered, restrained, and timeless, despite their modern origins.
Modern Heirlooms portrait series sits at the intersection of art, portraiture, and material culture. It operates both as a subtle critique of overconsumption and a focus on craftsmanship, detail, and attention. Each piece is conceived as a finished artwork, intended to endure beyond the moment in which it was made.
This series forms part of my wider studio practice, shaped by over 25 years as a photographer and a Master’s degree in Art History, where portraiture is approached not as documentation, but as a form of legacy-making.
The studio and it’s approach has been referenced in Luxury Lifestyle Magazine, within their Best of the Rest editorial.
For press or editorial enquiries relating to this project, please contact jessica@thehouseofhenley.com
