chez ma mère
Author’s statement
This is the place where I grew up and the images have a nostalgic quality for me. The images bring back memories from my childhood through to when I left home as a young adult. Memories of my mother’s gardens that have always been a mix of fruit trees and flowers, of asbestos sheds filled with ancient boxes of ancient tools, of the dams that we swam in as children that are now filled with water lillies, of maintaining aging fences to keep in the stockand of building my mother a fish pond by cutting down and rendering a rusty water tank.
Many of the images, while taken recently, could have been taken during my childhood or at any period in between. Sometimes things in life change very slowly. However my mother has now reached eighty years of age and can no longer be described as sprightly. We are discussing how long she can continue to remain in the place that has been her home for over forty years. For me these images and others that I have taken are also a record of a time that is rapidly drawing to a close.
Please enjoy them with me.
Shane Clarkson
