Ghost Limbs is a personal inquiry into origin and homesickness. After two decades living away from her native California, Rachel Helfand’s connection to the landscape has intensified rather than diminished. The series reflects a longing for a place shaped by memory, family history, and the physical sensations of coastline, ocean, and climate.

Viewed through the lens of motherhood and return, the work considers how landscapes—like bodies—are altered over time. Within the context of climate change, Helfand examines the fragility of environments once assumed to be permanent. The resulting photographs function as a meditation on loss, attachment, and the tenuous nature of place.

Seashells, fragments of seaweed, and stones appear as quiet witnesses—storytelling artifacts that hold memory and meaning. Together, they form a visual language rooted in touch and observation, offering a reflection on what endures and what disappears. Their juxtaposition with fleeting glimpses of a child’s body—also in a state of continual change—adds a sense of poignancy, linking the human body to the natural world. While the place may be distant, the body, like a ghost limb, remembers.