When Caroline Furneaux’s father Colin died suddenly in 2011, she discovered an archive of 35mm slides that he had shot during the 1960s. They were a beguiling series of beautiful women photographed in idyllic locations, mostly in Sweden, where he was working and living. It was during this time that he had first met Caroline’s Swedish mother, Barbro, yet hardly any of the photographs were of her.
Who were these girlfriends? For Furneaux, they evoked off-duty film stars from a bygone era. They were everyday goddesses encapsulating the essence of youth and Scandinavian summers: short and intensely sweet. Sleuth-like, she scoured the photographs, cropping and enlarging tiny fragments, looking for clues as to who the women might be and how her father might have met them. She showed them to family members, but they didn’t recognise any of them.
She began writing her own responses to these images, creating characters and entwining them with memories from her own childhood and summers spent in Sweden.
Caroline Furneaux: The Mothers I Might Have Had
Category: Photographer Monographs & Art Books
Author: Caroline Furneaux
Publisher: Dewi Lewis Publishing
Publication Date:
2024
Print Length: 156 pages
Language: English
Price: paid
paid
paid
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