I started the MA with a desire to make a change, I wanted to change peoples perceptions surrounding bereavement photography and death in general.
At the start of this module, I had planned to meet with charities and organisations which work with bereaved parents. I also planned on spending time with my families from previous work. I had been in contact with Mothers for mothers which is a charity working with parents who have experienced perinatal loss and maybe on their next pregnancy, the anxiety they experience is quite horrific, this charity gives them the opportunity to meet with other families in the same situation and also take part in art psychotherapy classes. This led to me looking further into other charitable organisations. I had so many ideas yet unable to take part in any group activities. COVID and lockdown really left me so restricted with my work.
After considerable time and thought I decided I would take my focus to the cemetery. A place of tranquility that I have loved spending my time, I find it a wonderful place where I can clear my head of the business from everyday life, a place to slow down and reflect.
It meant a fresh start but so be it, I needed to adapt.
I'm fortunate to live within walking distance to one of the biggest cemeteries in the UK, a beautiful heritage site, 45 green acres of spectacular Victorian Garden Cemetery. I became a regular visitor to both Arnos Vale and The Roman Catholic Holy Souls Cemetery which is directly next door.
I firstly walked around the Roman Catholic cemetery and was taken aback by the beauty of all the headstones, how ornate they were and what these meant to different people, families of different cultures, and backgrounds.
This was just the beginning of what would see me spending 6 months here at Arnos.
On returning home I started researching different photographers who had also photographed headstones and burial grounds, a few I found so interesting especially the work of renowned artist Sophie Calle. Calle photographs the words on headstones, something made me question her reason for this. https://withreferencetodeath.philippocock.net/blog/calle-sophie-les-tombes-1990/
Les Tombes – Father, Mother, Son. Via Cornette de Saint Cyr.
Death figures large in the work of Ms. Calle, widely acclaimed as France’s leading conceptual artist, and occupies an important place in her life. She celebrates it in style — her own, her mother’s, that of strangers and pets — along with birthdays and moments of amorous rupture. A ritualist and a player of games, in her work she records key moments of her life and reworks them into cathartic fiction. It was plans for a ritual celebration that led her to buy a plot in a cemetery in Bolinas, a small Californian coastal community north of San Francisco, last year. She had wanted to play out a dress rehearsal of her own funeral in the Montparnasse burial ground in Paris, she said; but for that, she needed a grave, and the Montparnasse authorities, with Cartesian logic, wouldn’t sell her one because she wasn’t dead. – via Claudia Barbieri nytimes.
Calle's work really resonated with me especially her work in Absense Calle's show at Paula Hooper Gallery. I too became engrossed with Photography and death following the loss of my own mother. What caught my attention was the use of her mothers last words "souci'" which appears frequently, rendered in tall, imposing letters that loom above the other peices.
The French word means “worry” and is often uttered within the phrase “Sans souci” or “Don’t worry.” But Calle fails to include the negative “don’t,” turning the show into an exploration on negatives, positives, and neutrals. Like much of Calle’s past work, Absence acts as a mystery novel that tirelessly searches for a missing person. In this case, that person is her mother.