Maria Ansell

89 | I am currently in my third year studying photography at Manchester School of Art, I have an interest in developing narratives based around specific people, places and objects. Especially those I have a personal connection to. I enjoy both traditional documentary portraiture and appropriation. By investigating multiple approaches to image making I aim to create a broader picture of my subject.

  These images are from my personal project '89'.  In this series I have approached the topic of memory in the photographic image. My grandfather's recent Alzheimers diagnosis has challenged the way I think of memories and our obsession as a society with capturing ‘perfect’ moments. So much so that I think we distort our own memories until we no longer know what is true. I am aware that my perspective is biased, I am photographing from the point of view of someone pre-emptively mourning, I am intentionally looking back on fond childhood memories and trying to immortalise a feeling of comfort.

 I have combined both appropriated family photos and created my own images, focusing on the house in Nottingham my grandfather has lived in for 50 years, which he has now left to come and live in our family home. I am trying to encapsulate the sense of nostalgia in a grandparents home which I think a lot of people can relate to. There is a strange juxtaposition in his house, warm childhood memories combined with the sombre feeling of leaving a space and being unwilling to lose the memories attached to it. My aim with this work was to draw on shared experiences, nostalgia and stereotypical family moments. I hope that after you view these images you are reminded of your own family, moments and spaces you find important. www.mariaansell.com

"89, what a ludicrous number. Just look at it and think - how ridiculous can you be!" - Clifford Ansell, 2018.