You Are My One And Only
Oliver Woods

October & November 2025

Mum and dad didn’t know that they both carried a fatal, ultra-rare genetic condition, and my younger brother and sister died when I was a child. But my genes are unaffected. After my parents died, I photographed the house I grew up in to tell this story and to explore my own identity.

In the years following the death of my siblings, mum used to say to me: “You are my one and only” This phrase always felt finely balanced between love and loss. I
became an only child, and I stopped being the eldest. But I felt that I was neither. After mum and dad died, I realised that photographing the house would be a way to
explore all the different things that I was feeling. My approach throughout was emotionally forensic, and I felt like a visual archaeologist peeling back many different layers. I wanted to show the past, the present and the future and I chose different ways to represent this.

By photographing the house, I have wanted to examine everything, as if I am looking for something. Perhaps what I have been looking for is a sense of identity and a way of looking to find myself. Maybe all I want to say is that once I was a brother.