©Winky Lewis, Shadow I

Welcoming the next generation has changed the way I think about the future. When you have a new generation in your life, the world suddenly feels both more hopeful and more fragile. You find yourself thinking about the things you took for granted when your own children were young and about the world the next generation will inherit. It is impossible not to wonder what we are handing them.

That sense of love, worry, and responsibility runs through Winky Lewis’ project, Shadow Kids, a deeply personal body of work that looks at childhood through the complicated lens of memory and fear. Using nearly life-size silhouettes layered with night skies, toy airplanes, and hand-made marks, the artist creates images that are beautiful at first glance but carry a quiet uneasiness. The children seem both present and disappearing, suspended somewhere between play and threat. What stays with me is the tension between our desire to protect children and the growing awareness of how little we can control the world around them. These photographs ask us to hold both things at once: the wonder of childhood and the very real dangers that surround it.

©Winky Lewis, Shadow II

As a child, photographs were small treasures—4″ x 6″ prints held in my hand or set in a frame—that stood as proof of a family intact. When my family’s world was shaken, I learned to look away from what scared me and toward what remained whole—with a camera. Taking pictures became an act of preservation: holding on to the moment, the ordinary, the beautiful.

Decades later, with my own children grown and launched, Shadow Kids confronts my fears for children today. Nearly life‑size silhouettes of children—flattened into shadow—are layered with the night sky, toy airplanes, and the marks of my hand. These figures are both solid and spectral: playthings and constellations mapped over the traces of fear. They speak to childhood’s duality—the wonder, play, and innocence alongside deep vulnerability.

I want these silhouettes to ask that we consider how poverty, political violence, environmental threats, war, and the ubiquity of guns shape the contours of childhood. The shadows are not mere absence; they are presence refracted through danger, memory, and care. – Winky Lewis

©Winky Lewis, Shadow III

Tell us about your growing up and what brought you to photography….

I grew up in the 70s and 80s, and I had a Kodak Instamatic in my hands from a very young age. My parents had always taken beautiful photos, and I treasured them — some were framed, but many more I squirreled away. My mother got very sick when I was eight, and those photos became evidence of the “before.” That mattered enormously to me. The proof those printed photos provided me was key. That’s why I started taking pictures. After my mother got sick, I used my little camera to photograph everything that was still normal: our dogs, my little brother, my stuffed animals, etc. I photographed what I wanted to hold onto, not what scared me. And that practice turned into a love of photography.

©Winky Lewis, Shadow V

You describe photographs from your childhood as “proof of a family intact.” How did that early relationship to photography shape the artist you became and, ultimately, Shadow Kids?

I’ve never stopped. I still love making beautiful photos of people and things. But Shadow Kids is a departure for me, these images are about children in general and my fears for children today. Now that my own children are grown and I’ve gotten them safely on their way I feel like the greater world opened up to me a bit, and the circumstances that so many children face became clearer to me and is horrifying. This series of photographs arose out of this fear.

©Winky Lewis, Shadow VI

The silhouettes of the children are nearly life-size, yet they remain anonymous and flattened into shadow. Why was it important to remove individual identity and create figures that could stand for childhood more broadly?

These images aren’t about specific children, which is why the silhouettes work for me. It was important to make them anonymous — to have these shadows, these forms and shapes, stand in for any child.

©Winky Lewis, Shadow VII

You have combined the silhouettes with night skies, toy airplanes, and your own hand-drawn marks. How do these elementswork together to create the emotional tension at the heart of the images?

I love playing with layering images and there are all sorts of layers in these photographs. Sometimes they’re carefully constructed, and sometimes they’re the result of me just experimenting with different elements — I’ve long played with layering images. The toys and airplanes fell into my lap, in a way. I’d been photographing some lead toys of my husband’s — originally from the ’40s — for another reason, while simultaneously reading about, and seeing, tragic images of bombing victims in Ukraine. The planes soon became part of my Shadow Kids.

I hope the shadows represent both presence and absence. They’re just flat shapes, but I want them to carry spirit, character, and hope — and then also vulnerability and fear.

©Winky Lewis, Shadow VIII

How do you think the experience of being a child has changed in the world we inhabit now?

I tend to be glass half-empty when I think about these big questions, like how childhood has and is changing. My own early childhood was ideal, spent in the countryside, literally running in fields and streams. My children had a wonderful childhood too, I was determined to be there and stick around as long as I could! But life is much more complicated and connected now, and I suppose it will continue in that direction, unless there is some wonderful backlash.

©Winky Lewis, Shadow X

You write that the shadows are “not mere absence” but “presence refracted through danger, memory, and care.” Can you talk more about that idea of the shadow as both something threatening and something protective?

I loved being a mother to young children, and I love being a mother to my grown children today. Photographing all of it was an honor, truly. But at some point it hit me how all-consuming it had been — or how all-consuming I’d made it, I don’t know — and how small my world had become. And with that came the realization of how terrifying the world can be for so many, especially children. I’d always known this, of course, but being done with the years of mothering younger kids gave me the time and energy to really see it. This series is what came out of that.

©Winky Lewis, Shadow XI

Now that your own children are grown, how has becoming a parent and watching your children move into the world changed what you fear, what you want to protect, and ultimately what you photograph?

I never know what photo project is next. I wish this weren’t the case — I wish I were more of a planner!

©Winky Lewis, Shadow XII

©Winky Lewis, Shadow XIII

©Winky Lewis, Shadow XIV

©Winky Lewis, Shadow XV

©Winky Lewis, Shadow IX

©Winky Lewis, Shadow IV