Melinda Reyes

winslow gray road

My father’s body was discovered on Winslow Gray Road on the southern coast of Cape Cod. It was November 30th, 2021 at 7:30 a.m. It is estimated that he was struck, killed, and left to die at 5:02 p.m. the prior evening. It was 26 degrees Fahrenheit and he was a few houses away from his own. No suspect has ever been found.

This life-changing event has altered the lens through which I view the world, shifting my perceptions of safety and justice as I attempt to make sense of what remains when a daughter loses her father in such a violent, stark way.

In the aftermath of my father’s unsolved homicide, I began this body of work, Winslow Gray Road that explores the intersection of grief, evidence, and love. My work arises from an unrelenting need to understand and give form to loss. Over the past 4 years, my practice of photography has become an act of endurance and reclamation, where creation itself restores a sense of agency to a survivor’s story.

In Winslow Gray Road, I approach the site of his death as daughter, investigator, and artist. I gathered and reconfigured remnants from the crime scene - collecting dirt, gravel, pine needles, a shred of his clothing, and the orange fragments of a headlight shattered on impact. I gently cast the tire tracks as I sought to trace patterns to lead me to the person responsible. Acts of grief blurred into forensic inquiry. Each object holds the dual weight of truth and memory, forming a dialogue between what is known and what remains a mystery.

This body of work underscores how an unsolved homicide is a type of undoing, an unveiling - exploring what it means as survivors / co-victims, to live in opposing realities - the tangible and the intangible In this space between knowing and not knowing, between presence and void, my art seeks to illuminate the complexities that exist and permeate one’s life when there are no answers.

And then, there comes a time when survivors take the bold and disa

Winslow Gray Road embodies my journey through grief, toward healing, to reveal how art can transform trauma into a visual language when words are not enough.

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Photographer’s Statement: There were over 21,000 homicides in the U.S. the year my father was killed and of that 1,781 were hit and run fatalities - 90% of which go unsolved. In Massachusetts alone, at least 23 fatal hit-and-run cases remain unsolved since 2011.” This grueling absence of resolution leaves families and communities like mine suspended in grief, unable to fully move on.

Our news has become saturated with national and global atrocities and we have unintentionally become more desensitized and indifferent to news of a smaller scale and only that which directly touches our lives. Leaving those who personally experience homicide feeling isolated. This project is dedicated to the 23 individuals and their families in Massachusetts whose lives were lost and their homicide still remains unsolved.

150 steps, 1 minute and 19 seconds - the walk towards…

There comes a time when survivors / co-victims take the bold and disarming step toward conjecture. Trying to understand that which can not be, trying to put in a box, a context, nice and neatly when what it is, is raw and messy. It is grief that keeps one suspended in speculation, guessing. How does one expose and share what spins in the darkness within the recesses of one’s mind. It comes in flashes, triggered by many forces. the imagination becomes frightening, and stays compartmentalized for breathing it in any other way is not possible.