and then I ran - 2023
‘and then I ran’ employs self-portraiture, image and text, visualising the narrative of my grandmother’s recollection of escaping a mother and baby home, 1964, Ireland. Mother and baby homes were run for over 200 years, funded by the government and run by religious order. These homes forced unwed mothers into secrecy while neglecting to provide adequate care for mothers and babies. The project explores Ireland’s deep shame culminating from the separation and exportation of babies, as well as oppressive conditions experienced by these women. ‘and then I ran’ has three elements interlaced throughout. Black and white images are performative reenactments referring to my grandmother's escape and a visual representation of loss. The colour landscape imagery brings the viewer to a specific landscape or still life to revisit a memory. The mixture of the three elements sit between current day and history, going back in time to discuss ideas of freedom, distress and confinement. Repetition lies throughout the work to nod to Freudian theories of “repetition compulsion” caused from trauma, a cycle in which you enact content that has been suppressed, repeating instead of remembering. The work discusses the oppressive conditions and psychological maltreatment experienced by women in Ireland. From 1922 until 1998, around 56,000 women and 57,000 children were placed into these homes.
“O’Connell’s project is concerned less with death but the brutality of survival, separation, and the broader culture of conservatism and shame in Ireland. Her grandmother was just sixteen in 1964 when she climbed out of a window of a mother and baby home in County Westmeath, heavily pregnant, and ran. She gave birth to a son—O’Connell’s father—in Dublin, but he was swiftly removed to an adoption home, and wouldn’t see his mother for another 37 years…The shutter release cable, an explicit component in the construction of several images, acknowledges photographic production as a method of reclamation, making visible stories that have been cruelly concealed.” - Written by Lillian Wilkie for Peckham 24
Now showing at Peckham 24 & Photo London: https://www.peckham24.com/emi-oconnell
Exhibited at University of Arts MA Photojournalism and Documentary Grad Show from Wednesday 15th November-Saturday 18th November 2023.
