Tulip, my Mother’s favourite flower.

In September 2009 my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and a brain tumour. Following a succession of emotionally and physically debilitating treatments over a twelve month period, including brain operations, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, it was clear that nothing was working. It was too late. By April 2010 they had confirmed it was terminal. 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 this project to become a graphic portrayal of her death. My mother was an amazing woman, and it would have been impossible, and wrong, to focus only on the dying part. I wanted to look at the things that made her uniquely her. Her house was so individual, just like her. She had distinctive taste, slightly childlike, loving anything bright. I needed to document it all. 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. This project has just been published into limited edition book by Dewi Lewis Publishing: www.dewilewis.com/collections/new-titles/products/tulip