In September 2009 my mother, Sue Miles, was diagnosed with lung cancer and a brain tumour. While I was trying to come to terms with the fact she was dying, I decided I wanted, or maybe needed, to document the time she had left. I didn’t want to create a graphic portrayal of her death, it would have been impossible and wrong to focus only on the dying part, but rather I wanted to photograph our last months together. I looked at the things that made her uniquely her, the details in her house I thought I knew so well, the things that would also be gone when she was. Her love of flowers was a beautiful part of her personality; the house was always full of them, and as I photographed them I realised they were symbolic of what was happening - they represented happiness, love, kindness and generosity, but also isolation, decay, and finally death.
Tulip has just been published into a beautiful book by Dewi Lewis Publishing. Available to buy here now
Named Photo Book Of The Month By Sean O'Hagan in The Observer & Photo Book of The Week by Photo-Eye
The project has received widespread acclaim and has been shortlisted for several prestigious photography awards including The European Publishers Award For Photography, Prix Virginia International Prize for Women, The Deutsche Bank Photography Award, Lucie Foundation and the Emergentes DST International Photography Award.
It's been featured in many places including: The British Journal of Photography, BBC News, The Guardian, Photomonitor, The Observer, Vanity Fair, The Independent, Firecracker, L’Oeil de la Photographie, The Telegraph Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, Lens Culture, and a selected winner in the Creative Review Photography Annual 2016.
Further images of the book can be seen here