These portraits were made with residents and support workers of Gowrie Care, a woman’s support and re-housing home in Scotland. Taken on a large format 10x8 film camera, after developing the film, I would give the residents the physical film negative of their portrait and a pen. Asking them to write directly on the negative and in doing so create a more truthful image of themselves.
Having done the exercise myself I found it quite a bit harder than I expected, not only because as a photographer it goes completely against the grain to take a permanent marker to your negative, but I realised I was asking a lot with this fairly personal and self-reflective exercise.
Images created and made in collaboration with; Eloise, Amal, Wendy, Sarah and Donna.
I would like to revisit this project with more time for the initial photographs. These images were made within a few hours in a workshop with limited time.
The negatives were then developed, returned to the participants, and collected the next day. Allowing the participants to have a full 24 hours with which to decide, in their own time and space, what to write/draw on their images.
