"This Is You, This Is Me" - An Ongoing Portfolio

There is no escaping the body. Each of us occupies this mass of tissue, muscle, bone and skin we call our body and we all own complex feelings about it, some positive, some negative. We have good days and bad days, often dependent on the perceptions of others.

This new work explores my relationship to my own ‘disabled’ body, both personally and in connection to society’s view of what is normal or perfect. It continues where my portfolio “I Am My Body” left off, delving into the discomforts and insecurities that come with pain, the pleasures and delights of what could be or what in fact is just the reality of my body. Each photograph is a small tale or contemplation that exists and evolves within my body at any time. As a whole, the project reflects longings, desires, hurts and limitations as well as mapping the physical history of my body.

The photographs also contain memories. The act of photographing myself repeatedly brought forth remembrances of surgeries and falls, of other people’s stares and their reactions to me. Many of the photographs utter the unkind words or enquiries that are often asked without consent, catching me off guard, and sometimes shocking me into remembering that I was supposedly different from everybody.

But actually this is a falsehood. The truth is there is no such thing as the perfect body as society will have you believe. The body pictured here might just as well be yours with the same longings, desires, insecurities and abnormalities as mine. It’s just pictured a little bit differently. 

All images are printed in the darkroom on 16"x 20" Ilford semi-matt warm-tone paper and toned in gold. 

2012

Emergence

Pin-up

This Might Be Your Body

Body Is Experiencing

Look At Me

Spastic

This Body Is Just Strange

Disregard

Thoughts of Venus

Flawed

Balancing Act

Guarded

In A Perfect World, There Is The Perfect Body

Reflection

All images © Claire Gilliam

On Reflection - All Things Must Pass

2012 has been a strange and curious year so far. In the very first three months, I experienced what could surely be considered every emotion under the sun, and intensely so. Shock, worry, stress, uncertainty, grief, joy, hope, death, loss, love... I felt it all. It was a roller coaster ride from which there was no way off. I had no choice but to hold on tightly to my conviction that I would make it to the end in one piece. Sometimes though I had my doubts, I did wonder how I would come through it all. I am still wondering but with less apprehension then three months ago when it seemed as though a huge part of my life had come to an end and all I felt was a massive void.

Towards the end of January, after having just returned from the UK for the Christmas break, I received the dreaded phone call I knew would come one day to tell me that my grandmother, who had raised me as her daughter since I was a baby, had fallen gravely ill. The prognosis was not good and she wasn't expected to live through the night. There is something dreadful about taking a long distance flight in these emergency situations, wondering if upon landing you've made it in time. I could hardly look at my uncle's face as he stood waiting for me in the Arrivals lounge the very next day. I knew his expression would tell it all with one swift glance and I didn't want to know. It was alright for the moment but that was only to be the start of it. My mum was an extraordinary woman who turned out to have more strength in her then we could ever have imagined (which was already a great deal). She would confound the doctors' expectations who, on a weekly basis, would suggest that the end was close, we should prepare ourselves but who were proven wrong to the very last week of her life.

Rosalind

Winter months turned to Spring, a period of time (ten weeks in all) that exist in my memory as daily visits to St Helier Hospital, where my mum lay stricken and silent with the effects of her debilitating stroke. My sister and I formed a mantra of sorts to help navigate our way through the quagmire of emotion and stress we both felt. We'd say it to one another frequently throughout the day and with some urgency near the end when it was clear she was going downhill and we had to make the painful decision to withdraw the feeding tube keeping her alive in a nether land state of non-existence. It was simply this - 'step by step'. And by sticking to this philosophy, we found that we could gradually move forward and take in what was so impossible to bear. 

Bird

But the experience of journeying with my mum to the end of her life has left me changed as I'm sure it has for all my family. Images float unabated each day of a moment in time at the hospital, some beautiful like the extraordinary times my mum would seemingly come back into consciousness and realize her family were with her. She'd smile then, blow us kisses and roll her eyes in the way that was uniquely mum as if to say, look at this ridiculous situation I've found myself in. We'd laugh with tears in our eyes, finding hope and a belief that mum was still with us after all, just waiting for the day when she'd be unlocked from her damaged body. Others are more haunting such as any moment of her last days when her features shrunk and her face became that of someone else entirely; or the silent tears she let flow as her youngest grandchildren said their final farewells a few days before she died.  They are as vivid to me now as if it were yesterday. I don't mind... I am grateful that I could be there, feel the close connection with my family and experience as intensely as I did. I want to remember those precious days truthfully despite the pain that accompanies many of these memories.

Precautionary Measure

C-Block Corridor

The Last day

I took to taking a few photographs every now and again as I sat in her room or wandered down the hospital corridors to get yet another cup of coffee and panini from Costa Coffee. I felt I needed to capture those fleeting  moments of the way the light fell or a feeling felt. I snapped away on my iPhone, so this intense and surreal time could be frozen in time and stored for prosperity. I photographed in my mum's house too, my childhood home where a wealth of memories and experience are stored with in the walls. I was losing this too.

Final Morning at Sprucedale 

Leaving Sprucedale Gardens

Lately I've found myself thinking about George Harrison's well known lyric, 'All Things Must Pass'. The simplicity and the profound truth of these words seem particularly relevant to me this year. I am beginning to accept the loss of my mum and have a glimmer of understanding of how change, even unexpected and shocking change that feels like your world has been turned upside down, can be an impetus for moving forward. I have come to see that life in every facet is progression, it is never static and so it is in death too, cliched as this statement is...'There is no growth without change'. There is some comfort in this. Although it doesn't make the feeling of loss diminish completely, it does urge me to be open to new possibilities, think more creatively, to open my eyes more fully, listen more closely, be mindful of my past whilst thinking forward into the future and engage with the experience of living intensely.

All images © Claire Gilliam

A Study In What It Means To Be Human

Everyone has a story to tell. And I think its important to listen to those stories. There is something amazing about sharing a part of yourself, your history, especially when you consider the amount of courage it may have taken. It enriches our own lives, and can teach us a thing or two about humankind. It can bring us back into touch with our surroundings, the world, and out of ourselves which we can too often get enveloped in. There are a number of projects that I have become aware of recently that I think are worth checking out.

The first one is the StoryCorps project. You can hear this on NPR every Thursday morning on Morning Edition or online. At the heart of this project is a simple but wonderful idea about two people who are important to one another connecting through the act of conversation, often by the retelling of a significant event or memory. These conversations  are recorded in mobile booths dotted about the USA (anyone can sign up and participate) and are archived at the Library of Congress. Sometimes the stories are horrifying, other times funny or touching, but they always leave me with a sense of a fuller understanding for the world. As the founder of the project Dave Isay writes.......

'By listening closely to one another, we can help illuminate the true character of

 this nation reminding us all just how precious each day can be and how truly great 

 it is to be alive.' 

 This I Believe is an idea that dates back from a 1950's radio programme created by journalist and public Edmund R Murrow during the time of the Cold War, and a feeling that there was a loss of spiritual values in America. The intent was in Murrow's words 'to point to the common meeting grounds of beliefs, which is the essence of brotherhood and the floor of our civilization.' Public figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt, and Harry Truman gave millions of daily radio listeners hope and inspiration through their brief essays of personal philosophies, and guiding principles. Three or four years ago, Jay Allison resurrected the idea for our modern times, and invited both celebrities, well known figures, and the general public at large to write short statements of beliefs to share on the air with others. The idea this time round was not to necessarily create  the sense of one shared belief, but rather to create a respect for many the diverse philosophies and beliefs out there in the world. I love this idea. I am intending this week to write my own essay. I think by doing this it can help focus in on what is important to you, and can be a springboard for jumping into new territory, or just reaffirm that you are on the right track. From time to time I like to spend time writing things like this, it can help get those creatives juices flowing. Throughout my art schooling I've been asked to write  things such as personal manifestos, dreams and goals in life (no dream or aspiration is too big or ridiculous). It opens your mind to all sorts of possibilities. So I will post mine in the coming days.....

Also worth taking a look at is One in 8 Million on the NY Times Website, videos of  the people and characters in New York City.

I have one final recommendation for you, whilst we are on the subject of listening, and the human capacity for goodness even when it feels all hope may be lost, which is to watch the German film 'The Lives Of Others'. You will be glad you did.

The Land and Home

While I still have Pat Barker's book in my mind, I thought I would elucidate a little on another thread of visual imagery her writing inspired in me. There are certain British writers who are able to capture the essence of English life to the tea......I don't mean the twee cream teas and scones, Miss Marple vision of England, more that through their descriptions, and dialogue they give the reader (at least this particular reader) a real sense of almost being there yourself. I can smell the quality of air, feel it wrap about me, feel the dampness or the clarity of the day as a character steps forward through woodland lanes, or takes a day trip to the coast on a cold blustery day.  I am not able to explain it really, except to say that it all seems to be about the evocation of the unique atmosphere a country has. When I read these writings, my heart longs to be there, a strong response that is emotional and physical, revealing an unseverable connection to my homeland. It conjures memories, and wistful longing.

There are a couple of British photographers who came to mind immediately as I read certain passages: Fay Godwin, who died in 2005 aged 74, photographed the British landscape, capturing quintissential Britishness, both in the land and the characters who lived and worked on it. They are beautiful and mysterious, illustrating the sometimes bleak and barren topography of the UK. 

Beadnell Bay, Northumberland 1991

Path and Reservoir, Lumbutts, Yorkshire, 1977

Top Withens, Calder Valley, 1977

Social Security Office, Yorkshire, 1971

Between 1993 & 1996, Magnum photographer, Mark Power set out to make a series of images based on the locations of the Shipping Forecast, broadcast for seafaring folk four times daily on BBC Radio 4. The names of these remote lands, such as Viking, Cromerty, Dogger, Fisher, German Bight, create imaginings of enigmatic and romantic landscapes. The Shipping Forecast suits the notions of an Island Nation. Although many of these places aren't located off the coast of the UK, but other European nations like France, Germany and Iceland, in the images below of the northeast English coast, Mark Power has managed to capture that atmosphere I have been attempting to explain. 

Tyne

Sunday 25th July 1993

West or southwest 3 0r 4 increasing 5 or 6. Showers. Good.

Tyne

Sunday 25th July 1993

West or southwest 3 or 4 increasing 5 or 6. Showers. Good.

        

All this talk of my homeland has had me thinking about what it means to shift your roots from one country to another.  More than ever before, people are on the move, either by choice or necessity. Does your birthplace define you, in some way, and if that is the case, then does the nature of who you are change when you no longer live there?  It's an interesting thought, and one that I return to every now and again as I live my life away from my birth place, and my family, in a country full of immigrants. Jhumpa Lahiri, in my opinion a brilliant American author of Bengali descent, delves deeply into this subject in all three of her books, the most famous one being 'The Namesake', but 'Unaccustomed Earth' is well worth a read too. Her characters have usually emmigrated from India to America. This essentially seems to make for a melancholy life attempting to embrace American Culture as their own, and most often in the case of their children, who are commonly born in the USA, the struggle to connect with their Indian heritage and find their rightful place in America. Ultimately they can never disconnect with their roots, begging the question, where do you belong? There is a sense of neither here or there perhaps. I am fascinated my these ideas, and it has inspired the desire to explore further in visual terms this notion of belonging. 

A landslide victory

Well, it's been one week since our vote rocked this country, and pushed it onto a new and hopeful path to change. Although I was not able to vote (alas, I am not a US citizen), I insisted on going to the polling station with my husband to watch American Democracy in action, and was stirred by such a feeling of excitement that I was present, and witness to, the most important election of our times. The small village firehouse in Warwick, a rather non-descript place was a scurry of activity, with members of our community out in force, helping the day run smoothly (as far as I know there were no voting fiasco's to be had). There was a definite air of this being a momentous day, that history was about to be made. The voting machines in Warwick appear to have been in use for many many decades, huge hulking things surrounded by curtains that open and close on the command of a enormous lever that the voter pulls right then left, marking the beginning and end of the ritual. There appeared to be no electronics or any paper involved in the process, just the matter of pushing a couple of markers down depending on your preference and hoping that that was enough for your vote to be registered. 

The only other time I have experienced an election day was 1st May 1997 in Sheffield, England. I was studying for my final year of a Fine Art degree, and I remember it as a hot and very busy spring as I prepared for my final degree show. This was the first time I was eligible to vote, and I remember quite an excitement about it, but still it didn't seem to have the grandeur, mystique,and general hallaballoo of a US election.  There just wasn't the buzz! The polling station was the village primary school. There were no machines, just a few private booth with pencils and the paper ballot to be ticked off as you wished. Simple! As it turned out, that general election was to be rather historical too, because on that day, a young Tony Blair was elected into government, winning in a landslide victory against the Conservative Party who'd been in power for decades. 

Early evening, after having avoided the television and radio news all day, we sat down together to watch the results start coming in, nervous now after feeling such certainty that Barrack Obama, our man, wouldn't get it, and in those very early stages, it was all looking slightly worrying. And then one by one, starting with the entire northeast, states on the TV maps of the country turned blue. With each one we whooped with joy, hopeful now that the country had spoken loud and clear, and finally at 11 o'clock we shed a few tears of joy when it was confirmed that our next president was going to be intelligent, compassionate, wise, and have integrity for a change....and black. Change we need, and a momentous day indeed!

(Incidently, and somewhat ironically, I found out a few days later that the town of Warwick voted for John McCain, and more of the same......it's hard to fathom, as I didn't know anyone who didn't want change.......still, there's no accountin' for folks).

Family Matters

A Memory of Susan Marshall, My Mother, With Her Family, C. 1970 (2008)

Rosalind Marshall, My Grandmother (2007)

Alan Marshall, My Grandfather (2007)

A Memory of the First Holiday Afterwards, C. 1978 (2008)

All images © Claire Gilliam

This past week has been spent preparing applications for Woodstock Center for Photography's annual 'Photographer's Fellowship  Fund Award', and juried competition 'Photography Now'. They are now out of my hands and awaiting the jurers at CPW. This is the first time I have entered work for any kind of award, and I found the process a bit nerve racking, and time consuming.....but it was worth all the effort, because even if I do not win, I have learnt many things, and realise that it is not so difficult after all just to go for it and see what happens!

The body of work I submitted for both awards was taken from "Family Matters', a project that I began working on last fall, and completed (stage 1) in March. Through the interweaving of text taken from the written recollections of my family, portraits of family members, and the reworking of old snapshots I put together a document that tells of one particular moment in my history. Its interesting to me because whilst it is an intensely personal body of work, that was painful for everyone involved, the collection as a whole begins to reveal the idea of truth and memory, and how this can shape one's life. Its a piece that I think, like my 'self portraits' I shall continue to work on......it is by no means finished! The images above a small sampling of the project.....and a poem which I wrote for the project

My memories of You

are sharp, acute.

I feel every moment lived.

Emotions Cut through my skin

Straight to my Heart.

My History is embedded with yours

Entwined and sculpted.

The 'I am' of me, always

Connected to you. By Chance

Circumstances.

One instant bringing change

Unforeseen but destined.

A Grey day sometime black night

Then Blue Sky heralding hope.

Your Gift to me.

No Earthquake could dismantle

My constancy and faith

In You. There, solid, and so strong, 

My kin stand facing outwards

Embracing Me.