Farewell Angelina: Trauma, loss, grief and the photographic

Abstract

Farewell Angelina is a reflection of a journey of grief explored poetically and with urgency through photography and the creation of a photographic bookwork. This bookmaking process reveals an autobiographical inquiry into the power of photographic art practice to respond to trauma, loss and grief and to help shape meaning in the aftermath. This research project began after the sudden and violent loss of my sister in 2015, and gradually became a path to live and make sense of life again. Accompanying this process I began an inquiry into how it is that photography and other art practices console and allow us to mediate suffering. With this investigation I theorise the capacity of artistic mediums, such as photography, to house memory and give form to otherwise inchoate and chaotic emotions and doing so, help us to shape the meaning we make of our lives and our worlds after profound loss. This inquiry, which responds directly to personal history, also reflects on art’s ability to create sites for grief and mourning. With my bookwork I invite others to engage with memorial and creative survival, and in doing this I reject the notion that mourning must be private and repressed. Making this work I recognise that art practice, no matter how personal its origins, also plays a social role and can be a poignant place to communicate, discuss and break silence after violent loss.