Trish Morrissey Seven Years

Last semester I came across the work of Trish Morrissey a London based photographer. One of her projects has significant relevance to what I am working on and it is entitled ‘Seven Years’. Seven years is the age gap between Morrissey and her sister whom she is photographed with for this project. Morrissey like other photographers analyzes the family album and how most families produce very similar family albums. Furthermore pictures of celebrations and siblings stood side by side. Through this project Morrissey acts as a Photographer, Model and artist, as she pictures herself in images with her sister.

The images are enactments of generic family photography. She poses with her sister for photographs which would have been taken of them as children. What I found particularly clever was that she used clothes and props from the 80’s to produce these images. Furthermore with most of the viewers having lived through that period it allows the observer to further relate to the images and create a comparison to their own personal images. Rather than if they were taken wearing contemporary attire and using contemporary objects, to which none of us relate our childhood. As a response to the family album Morrissey and her sister do not smile in the images captured and this is to represent the psychological tension which occurs within a family unit, which we always hide within our imagery.

Siblings instructed by their parents to stand next to one another as their photograph is taken is a common occurrence. The idea of recording the children in their youth, a record of what they looked like and a representation of their relationship together growing up within their happy childhood. Rarely does a parent take a picture of their siblings fighting and arguing which when I look back I remember being a far more frequent routine than me and my brother blissfully stood next to each other without a peep. Trish Morrissey’s encouraged me to take a nostalgic trip in time and have a look at some images taken of me and my brother by my mother around twenty years ago.

It didn't take much effort to find images which relate my personal family album to the work of Morrissey, in fact almost all the images were relevant. Above I have posted as an example two birthday pictures, fun times.

This images relates to the last one I posted of Morrissey, a moment caught in time of us all sporty and playing together.

Above; The inevitable, stand next to eachother and smile images.

Finally, I thought I'd give my mum a little credit here for getting all artsy and using the mirror.

So what I like about Morrissey’s work is how strongly I can relate to it and I believe a lot of people can. I like the idea of producing a set of imagery with a sort of mocking tone towards how generic the family album is seems really interesting. For now I am just looking up as many people who share some sort of commonality with my project as I can. Just to stir up different kinds of ideas and approaches.