honorable mention
Maria Short united kingdom
title
Slipping behind the curtain
When my mother became ill she was in Leicestershire, 160 miles north of Worthing. At the time I was living in Brighton, a city just along the coast from Worthing. My mum just wanted to come home; she wanted to be near the sea, hear the gulls cry and smell and feel the salty air. Whilst she precariously hung onto life in a hospital bed I worked tirelessly and against all odds to have her discharged from hospital and re-located to a nursing home in Worthing. Bringing my mother home is probably my greatest lifetime achievement.
In the final hours of her life I suddenly became overwhelmingly drowsy and couldn’t help but sleep for a while. Whilst I slept I dreamt that my mother sat up in her bed and took my hand. She knew she was about to die and she wanted to thank me for bringing her home. She had loved every minute of our time together and couldn’t thank me enough.
In my imagination my photographs work on the same level – they are a photographic letter to my mother – to tell her I’m now home and safe and happy.
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entry description
A year after my mother I died I moved back to our hometown of Worthing on the south coast of England and using a Box Brownie camera, similar to one my mother used in her younger years, made ‘Slipping behind the Curtain’.When my mother became ill she was in Leicestershire, 160 miles north of Worthing. At the time I was living in Brighton, a city just along the coast from Worthing. My mum just wanted to come home; she wanted to be near the sea, hear the gulls cry and smell and feel the salty air. Whilst she precariously hung onto life in a hospital bed I worked tirelessly and against all odds to have her discharged from hospital and re-located to a nursing home in Worthing. Bringing my mother home is probably my greatest lifetime achievement.
In the final hours of her life I suddenly became overwhelmingly drowsy and couldn’t help but sleep for a while. Whilst I slept I dreamt that my mother sat up in her bed and took my hand. She knew she was about to die and she wanted to thank me for bringing her home. She had loved every minute of our time together and couldn’t thank me enough.
In my imagination my photographs work on the same level – they are a photographic letter to my mother – to tell her I’m now home and safe and happy.
about the photographer
Maria Short (b. 1969) is a photographer, writer and a Senior Lecturer in Photography at the University of Brighton. She was awarded a BA (hons) degree in Editorial Photography in 1995 and an MA in Sequential Design in 1997. Short’s long-term professional practice explores photographic portraits of the domestic animal and the ways in which the human-animal relationship is visually represented. With a background in traditional analogue photographic practices her more recent work uses old box cameras and reflects upon the way an 'imperfect' image conveys an idea. Her pedagogic interest, the fostering of global citizenship through creative endeavour, is inspired by the work of the educator Daisaku Ikeda and his belief that, “the task of education must be fundamentally to ensure that knowledge serves to further the cause of human happiness and peace. Education must be the propelling force for an eternally unfolding humanitarian quest.”back to gallery
