Thoughts on Photography and Grief
Where to start? Do I just pick up from my last post? So much has happened and yet months of nothing. I haven’t posted much this year. I guess like most of you, there have been bigger things on my mind. It’s been a tough and weird year. Lockdown One began with me, my office, my partner and my dog. It started uncomfortably, adjusting and readjusting. The dust had settled a little before it was kicked up again. A bereavement. I had lost my granddad to Covid. Being away from family was hard. Good days, bad days. Then an art commission. I started to try and understand and to examine connection but even when using needles and threads, I still didn’t feel like I had quite got it.
Response to the Our Creative Cardiff 2020 project highlighting creative stories and creative communities in the city of Cardiff.
A string of unsuccessful exhibition entries and an unsuccessful PHD funding bid followed. The weeks went by and we could start to see family and friends again, albeit slowly and at a distance. Then my fixed term contract ended, our lease contract was up for renewal, so we thought fuck it and decided to move. A blur of sorting, recycling, throwing and packing encompassed second lockdown. I even tried to make work within the chaos, extending my exploration of connection to that which I have with my body.
We moved out and headed for Sweden. Travelling thorough an empty airport, an abundance of spare masks stuffed into our bags and two planes later, we land in Stockholm. It took about a week before my feet start to ground but was quickly swept away again with the news that my other grandfather had passed away due to covid. I didn’t know how to deal with grief this time. I didn’t have my chemistry. I would look around myself for something to grab hold of. What could I grab onto? During the Creative Cardiff commission, I explored grieving in lockdown. My outputs were based on a crowd-sourced collection of ways in which myself and others had been dealing with grief. But how do I grieve when still grieving? How to deal with grief atop of grief? How can I help and support my family when I’m not there? Again.
I looked back at how others dealt with grief and how generally as a culture we deal with death. I started thinking about how we use photos in the grieving process. Sorting, reflecting, sharing, memorial. But what about the photographs that come from our grief? Smiling and crying selfies, documentations of self-care, screenshots of online shopping. I went to an online lecture a few months ago on Contemporary Photography and Feminism with Carmen Winant, where there was a discussion on what makes photographs feminist. The question was asked, If the artist is a feminist does the work automatically fall into this category? If the maker is queer, is the work automatically labelled queer art? Do the photos we take during our periods of grief inevitably and inherently become grief photography? Documents of grieving in a variety of forms.
Are photographs of the meals I make and post on Instagram a record of me trying to continue creative activities, hands connecting with things to create something, something to keep me nourished. Nourishment of the body to then nourish my mind, to fill both my belly and brain may help to weigh me down, and land my feet back upon the ground.
I’m still learning about connection, still processing, ingesting and healing. I don’t want to feel so disconnected any more. The tasks I love most are all acts of connection. Research and experimenting or collecting history, knowledge and experiences, then connecting these through writing and photography and sharing out the findings and conclusions I make, to the wider world. I don't do any of these nearly as much as I want to. I don’t have many plans for the year ahead so I think this is a good place to start.