“A connected series of small books,” suggests Arpita Shah, about my ongoing work. “Or perhaps one book, but with some form of separation of the elements.”
This is most reassuring, as I’d always felt my project was personal, intimate and understated, and would be best presented at close and intimate range, and kept on a shelf rather than a coffee table. It also reminds me of the boxed books I loved as a child (Thomas the Tank Engine, for example, or the Mr Men series or the Narnia Chronicles). The books were simultaneously different, but part of a family.
And the project, perhaps driven in part by the module format of the MA, does indeed seem to fall into distinct volumes as I approach the autobiographical reverberations of a disappeared mother from a fresh tunnel each term.
She also pointed out the palette connections between the After series and the current Other Mothers work. This was not something I was consciously aware of, but am glad I am now.
But whereas my tutor Colin has expressed unease about my approach to the Other Mothers work, Arpita was supportive of it, and rather liked the suspended nature of the images photographed.
I have not given up on this mode entirely, but am now exploring projection as a means of introducing old photographs into my present day. I will see soon which works and feels best and pursue it from there.
The colour palette of the next Other Mothers photographs will change, because the projector I am using is battery powered and therefore only really usable in the near/dark.
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