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.

Last year I published this project into a photobook with Dewi Lewis Publishing. It was met with widespread acclaim, and been exhibited and published nationally and internationally. It was named Photo Book of the Month by Sean O’Hagan in The Observer newspaper and Photo Book of The Week by Photo-Eye, and featured in The British Journal of Photography, BBC News, Creative Review, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Independent, The Telegraph Magazine, L'Oeil de la Photographie, Black & White Photography Magazine, Amateur Photography Magazine, Vanity Fair and Photomonitor amongst others. 

Further images of the book can be seen here

Available to buy here now