| The Blue Portrait by Sian Davey |
“Why don’t you photograph me anymore?” A simple question sparks an ongoing project between a photographer and her stepdaughter that explores the tender, intimate moments of young womanhood.
“Why don’t you photograph me anymore?” This is what Martha said in response to me focusing my camera so often on her sister Alice. It took me by surprise. I wasn’t aware that she would care, but clearly she did.
Wild about the garden: inside photographer Siân Davey’s sanctuary
The artist transformed a neglected patch beside her cottage, attracting a variety of visitors eager to shed their inhibitions, clothes and anxieties, and whose lives she has caught in striking images that form part of a new exhibition
The photographer Siân Davey was “navigating a family deep in crisis” when her son Luke suggested that they transform a neglected garden outside her rented cottage into a wildflower sanctuary that would draw people in. “And, without any ambition, something in me said a resounding yes,” she says. Together, they set about clearing the plot, researching local flowers and sowing them according to the rituals of a Buddhist faith they both share.
The Garden
by Siân Davey
“There are no secrets in this house. Where there’s a secret, she says, there’s shame - and shame is something we can do without.” - Claire Keegan
“Why don’t we fill our back garden with wildflowers and bees, and the people we meet over the garden wall – we’ll invite them in to be photographed by you.” This is what my son Luke announced in the kitchen, midwinter, our back garden abandoned for at least ten years. I was sitting at the kitchen table, navigating a family deep in crisis.