My Nan's Little House Photography

After taking a series of photographs at my own house, I realised that images were sparse. I wanted to capture those marks of everyday life, the evidence that we as people existed in that space. I am not sure if it was because I was so familiar with my surroundings, or if the house itself didn’t hold enough evidence of the people that live there, but the photos were just not working. There was a disconnection between the idea I was trying to get across and the image in front of me, and if that was the case for me, then that would certainly be the case for someone else looking at the photograph. 

I considered what I needed to take photos of. In order to show this human connection with a space and surroundings I needed to look at a house that has been lived in, loved in, one that holds memories and treasures of things that have past, a older house. I decided that my Nan’s small bungalow would be perfect for this. I spent a lot of time in her house when I was younger, with my two cousins, after school and during the summer holidays when our parents were at work. We used to play and watch videos, and ride carts up and down the hill. I visited my Nan, took my camera, and whilst having lunch and talking I photographed her little house, capturing the things that I not only remember clearly, like her chairs or the phone on the side by the front door. But also the things that I saw that reminded me of my Nan, that had her personality and her life captured in the object or the surface. I am very close to my Nan, however, with everything being so hectic I don’t have much time to go to her little house for a visit as often as I used to. 

It was very emotional taking photos of my Nan’s house, there were so many things that I remembered from when I was smaller. Painting her step, planting her flowers, the birds nest in the post box. Seeing the photos on the film was even more so, by looking through the images I could see my Nan, everything that I love about her, captured in the stillness of the picture. The photos seemed to speak of her life, and everything that has past in that house. I realised then that I had hit on something powerful, something that I really connected with. 

There were many photos that I liked, but I understand now that this is because I felt a certain pull towards the objects that were in them. I have been re-reading Barthes’ Camera Lucida and the idea about how we cannot separate the photograph from the thing that is photographed, I really felt this when looking through these. I had to try and detach myself from the objects and look at the photos themselves with a critical eye to consider which ones worked better in relation to the brief that we were given and the proposal I had decided on. I also asked my tutor Jane which one worked for her, and it was different to the one I had chosen, it is virtually impossible to detach yourself from something that I felt such a connection to. 

There were three photographs that for me stood out from the rest. The first was this photograph of the railing on a set of steps leading up to the bungalow. Visually it is simple, again I know my appeal for the photograph was the story behind the steps that I remember. My family was building that front step when I born, my Dad, run up shouting that he had had a baby girl, and none of my family believed him because he had spent the last month joking with them that I had been born. That’s an extremely happy memory for me, my Dad passed away when I was younger so that step feels like a connection to him. This photograph, although not necessarily working for the brief, is something that I will be looking further into in the future, separate from this exhibition piece. It made me extremely emotional to look at and that is something I cannot ignore. Attempting to detach myself from the photograph I get a sense of age, the elderly needing a rail to be able to get up the stairs. Even though my Nan is 80 I do not see her as old, she is very young for her age so this for me is not an accurate representation of who my Nan is. 

The choice of photograph that I had made was this image of my Nan’s bedroom at home and the lovely tall mirror that she has had for as long as I remember. I really loved this image because I like the idea of a narrative of a scene, we look for the signs in the room and read about the space. Again, when trying to detach myself from what I know the room to be I see that it is quite an old fashioned room, the furniture is the part of the photograph that I feel emphasises this point, particularly the old wood of the mirror. It feels very lonely and quiet because you can see through the mirror into the room but there is still no one there. I think that instead of it feeling like the person is lost, it feels more like they are absent. Which is exactly what I wanted from these images. My connection to the photograph is that I know it is my Nan’s room, so when trying to capture her, this space, other than the kitchen, feels more like her than the others. Although visually, there is no focus on a particular object, the space creates a narrative but I am not sure that it is quite the right one.

The final photo, and the one that I chose to use for the exhibition, was one of a chair in my Nan’s spare bedroom. My Nan gets ready in this room and sits down here to do her hair and puts her jackets on the back of it. My tutor picked this one out from the series of photographs as the one that she thought presented the idea the best. I wanted to capture the presence of my Nan, and the solitary chair worked for the representation of her. The more I looked at it the more I saw my Nan in the chair, it was sturdy and soft, it looked comfortable, and strong. However, again I think that this image feels very sad, which is perhaps the absence of colour as well as the fact that the chair stands alone. The images feel very aged, which I think in this case gives the impression that the person who sits in the chair is gone. This is not quite my intention, the photo is perfect but I knew that I needed to include a small piece of writing that connected with this as an integral part of the work. I needed to write why the chair was my Nan, what made me choose this picture in relation to the brief.