This project is titled ‘Front’ and was made from 2005 to 2007. The following is a statement about the work:
“Front (2005-2007) deals with the notion of borders, boundaries and the edge, using the family group and the beach setting as metaphors. For this work, the artist travelled to beaches in the UK and around Melbourne. She approached families and groups of friends who had made temporary encampments, or marked out territories and asked if she could be part of their family temporarily. Morrissey then took over the role or position of a woman within that group – usually the mother figure. She asked to take her place, and to borrow her clothes. The woman then took over the artist’s role and photographed her family using a 4×5 camera (which Morrissey had already carefully set up). While Morrissey, a stranger on the beach, nestled in with her loved ones. These highly performative photographs are shaped by chance encounters with strangers, and by what happens when physical and psychological boundaries are crossed. Ideas around the mythological creature the ‘shape shifter’ and the cuckoo are evoked. Each piece within the series is titled by the name of the woman who Morrissey replaced within the group.”
In this work, Morrissey has used photography as a way to try and work through her own personal thought and feelings. She was pregnant at the time and was curious about her role change into a mother. The way in which she has experimented with the role in this visual form is a very interesting way for her to make her personal life more public, and in tern, she has made her situation relatable to other people who are becoming parents. She has raised questions such as, what type of parent she will be, and how her role in her life will change, what her other relationships will become and how she will change and adapt to fit with her new life. Something that is key in this work is the way in which she is using empathy to understand these different roles. The portraits have become visual empathy, she is living as another person for that moment, and therefore adopting their role. This makes the work very emotive, and perhaps is a technique that I could use in the early stages of my photo making in order to try and understand the direction the work will go. I think that I will take inspiration from this work and make some self portraits in a similar style, really using the idea of visual empathy and understanding through becoming another person in the photograph.
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