A Stranger in my Mother’s Kitchen

Made over a five year period this work is an intimate exploration of absence, memory, personal history and the grieving process, born from the yearning as a daughter to reconnect with my mother after her death. Told through photographs, writing about grief and cooking my mother's recipes, it shares a universal story of loss whilst also celebrating an historical food legacy.

My mother Sue Miles had an expansive career as a head chef, she was the first female head chef in Britain, the first woman to run an all-female professional kitchen and nurtured many of today’s most talented British chefs. She led a fascinating and varied life, described in her obituary in The Guardian newspaper as ‘the doyenne of the counterculture and the British restaurant revolution’, she died from cancer aged 66 in 2010.

As a daughter of a chef I learnt to cook by watching her cook, I took for granted we would have many more years to do this, so I had feared much of the history of her cooking had been lost. Whilst clearing out her home after her death, I discovered her collection of hand-written recipes, beautiful documents I had no idea existed. I felt an overpowering need to do something with this incredible archive, there seemed only one thing to do, to cook it. I slowly worked through all her recipes, cooking from these beautifully scruffy and stained pieces of paper. Some made no sense, others were merely a list of ingredients or instructions, but slowly I worked them out.

As I cooked, I felt connected to her immediately. I experienced the warmth of eating my mother’s food again, of being nurtured and cared for once more. The smells took me back to moments we shared like nothing else. For many years I cooked her food, and I wrote about my grief. This process was my grieving process. Aswell, I travelled to places we had connections, such as Italy where we moved for a few years when I was eight years old, and across America where she grew up. After five years of this process, on my last trip to America in 2015 I boarded a train on the south-west coast and after four days stepped off in New York City knowing that this work had come to an end.

I completed a book of this work in 2022, published with Dewi Lewis and designed by Loose Joints. This book is nearly sold out, a few copies are available to purchase through my Book Shop.

Selected Press

FT Magazine Gallery featured artist: A Stranger in my Mother’s Kitchen

The Guardian Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Awards 2023 Longlist

Photomonitor A Stranger in my Mother’s Kitchen: in conversation with Celine Marchbank

Loeil de la Photographie Celine Marchbank: A Stranger in my Mother's Kitchen

PhotoVoice How Photography Helped me: Celine Marchbank