My whole body of work has been based on my relationship between myself and my two older brothers. I have looked into the sibling dynamic in terms of family photograph, and memory construction, that according to Sahika Erkonan can be manipulated and misrepresented because of the change of relationships and the was in which we use emotions to remember, particularly looking back on old images and reflecting on family dynamics. This lead me to reflect on aspects of the relationship I have with my two older brothers. However, I have recently been more in contact with my younger sister, who is 17. She and I have the same dad, but different mums. She lives with our dad and is also the full sister of my younger half brother, and the half sister of my two older brothers (Rowan and Jack). Differing from my two older brothers, we have no family portraits, and we have no photographs to look back on us, apart from images from when she was a baby. I feel that this may be due to us having different mums, her mum, understandably, has images of just her, and my mum has images of her children, I feel as if there was less interest in making photographs of the two families together. Our dad, the common factor of the families, did not often make photographs of us.
The family portraits I have previously included of myself, Rowan and Jack (and Alex) were taken yearly. My half sister Flo and half brother Ethan also had these images taken yearly, organised by their mum, just like my mum organised our portraits (Flo and Ethan’s portraits shown bellow). I find these portrait difficult, they are both my siblings but they have a whole other life that I was never a part of, this is the difficulty in having half-siblings, I am so connected to them, yet there is so much about us that is different, and we will never have shared each others childhood, because of the ‘patch work’ nature of the family dynamic.
Moreover, after reading Prophecy Coles Sibling Relationships, a section on the half-sibling really resinated with me, and I begun thinking about it in terms of my own family. The way in which she talks about having a ‘blood relationship’ by being full or half- siblings I feel creates the feeling that despite having little contact, relationship, or nothing in common with a half-sibling, that one parent that you share creates a relationship. In terms of myself and my sister, we have never lived in the same house, however have so much in common by nature, the blood we share with our dad was enough to keep us close as we got older, even without spending time together. The reason I have decided to include this is because of myself and my sister, our relationship in the past few weeks has changed massively, probably down to her turning 17, and our age gap closing, meaning we have more in common.
I recently dyed my hair, and send my sister a picture. She then went on to say she was going to do the same to hers (which I didn’t actually think she would go through with). She did it the next day, this is the conversation we have via Instagram about it:
We then had a phone call conversation where she stated that she would not have done her hair like that if I hadn’t done it first.
The reason I have decided to include this is because of the vast contrast in power dynamic between myself and my half-sister, and me and my older, full- brothers, Rowan and Jack. Everything about the relationship is different, even the way we speak with each other, however, I have never lived with Flo, and lived with both Rowan and Jack my whole childhood, we share the same parents and have gone through the conventional sibling experiences (family holidays, living in the same house, going to the same school etc) unlike myself and Flo. I have also realised that the way in which Flo copied my hair represents her respect for me, almost looking up to me, literally copying my appearance. Perhaps this idealisation is how I feel about Rowan and Jack, copying their behaviours when I was younger, wanting to be more like them, but being limited because of our different genders, or perhaps being limited because of the disjoint in our relationship.
Prophecy Coles also talks about the idea of emulation and rejection, ‘identifying with one another, but sometimes rejecting such identification.’ This can be applied to both myself and my half-sister and myself and my full-brothers. It is all a chain of emulation, competition, identification, idealisation and rejection. I have been effected by the realisation that I have similar attributes to my brothers, perhaps wanted to look up to them when I was younger, but then realising when I was older that this was not what I wanted and therefore rejecting the identification. My half-sister looks up to me and tries to have a similar identity in a very extreme sense, perhaps this is because of factors such as being half-siblings, and she wishes we were full- sisters, and she is therefore not rejecting our shared identity. When she dyed her hair, I wasn’t angry, I was proud. I feel as though myself and Flo use aspects like this to become closer as we are both now old enough to take control of our relationship ourselves, instead of it being governed by the adults.
I do also think that there are elements of jealousy in our relationship, we have a lot in common, but don’t know enough about each other yet to see that we also, both have flaws. I think she is perfect, and there are for sure elements of her that I am jealous of, just like many sister relationships. I would be interested to explore this visually.
SHOOT PLAN:
Portraits of myself and my sister in the same frame, similar style to my previous portraits, however myself being more dominant? Myself being more visually controlling?
- Flo’s eyes open, my eyes shut
- hair the same
- same clothing?
- me standing above her
- heads next to each other
- outside? Think about location
VISUAL INSPIRATION
I have also realised that my previous research into Maja Daniels and her on going project, Monette and Mady is very relevant, as she makes photographs of two twin sisters that dress the same as each other. Even though myself and Flo aren’t twins, or full sisters, we are still making big changes to out physical appearance to look like each other. Monette and Mady naturally looked the same, however myself and Flo are going that little bit further to try to be more similar.
I am not sure if I will include this portraits in my final outcome, however am very interested in exploring this theme visually, I will make this work along side the work with Rowan and Jack. The two bodies of work will be in conversation with each other, but are slightly different sides of the same coin. I will still continue to focus on my relationship with Rowan and Jack.
Ethan
The reason I have not included Ethan in this project is because I have had no relationship with him until the last few months. He would be his own entire project.
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