The Scottish photographer reflects on returning to a mission she began in 1994 – photographing her sister and her youngsters in impoverished Stirling
In 1994, Scottish photographer Margaret Mitchell started working on a mission about her sister Andrea and her youngsters, Steven, Kellie and Chick. Household affords a glimpse into their home in The Raploch, Stirling, as they navigated troublesome socioeconomic circumstances. Greater than 20 years later, following Andrea’s demise, Mitchell determined to replace the household story. She documented the three youngsters, all dwelling separate lives as adults, for a mission titled In This Place. In over 20 years, the youngsters had not moved far – in both location or standing. Revealed in 2021, Passage presents each our bodies of labor, elevating questions on class and alternative within the UK, and whether or not our selections are preordained.
What made you need to replace the household story, 20 years later?
The political panorama within the early 90s shaped the background to Household, a time when single moms – particularly these with a number of youngsters, dwelling on council estates, like my sister – had been vilified by Conservative [Party] politicians. In 1994, I used to be pulled in by the politics of my sister’s state of affairs, however the work turned a deeply private story concerning the youngsters.
Over 20 years later, I felt a private pull that turned deeply political. I wished to re-evaluate the problems of inequality and stigma, and began with a sequence of questions: Why had the youngsters’s lives turned out as they’d? What had been the alternatives, or lack thereof, that had adopted them from childhood to maturity? Are our lives in the end predetermined by whether or not we’re born into drawback or privilege? I wished to query inequality throughout the UK, asking the place its supply lay. It’s a physique of labor that’s close to me, however repeated in numerous households and cultures.
Steven, Kellie and Chick are coping with lots of the identical challenges as their mom, however what new points do they face?
Though there may be pleasure, love and resilience, there may be additionally much less stability, much less alternative and much less household construction. On the time of updating the work, the youngsters all lived in run-down flats in areas the place alternative lessens merely due to the road you reside on. Adversity usually accumulates – it isn’t only one factor, however a complete host of disadvantages. If we’re disempowered as youngsters, if we really feel an absence of the power to select a path in life, if we lack cash, lack help, stay in environments that don’t provide good alternatives.
Household was shot virtually totally within the home, whereas In This Place situates us within the surrounding panorama. Why is that this?
Household is, at coronary heart, a narrative about childhood. Most of it’s shot within the home as a result of that’s the place their lives performed out. The world is thought for its social and financial deprivation, and I knew that as quickly as I stepped exterior, the status of the place would overshadow the content material within the photographs. After I up to date the work, the household had moved to the opposite aspect of city, to a brand new however related place. The exterior atmosphere turned important due to what had not modified. The duvet of [Passage] reveals an actual however basically symbolic bus route that ties the 2 locations collectively. It’s the ‘journey’ the 1994 youngsters took from their childhood home to the brand new space: two locations linked by an precise bus route, but in addition of their social deprivation statistics.
Why is that this picture of Steven (above) significantly poignant?
After I take images, I usually go for a stroll and chat. Steven informed me he knew a pleasant place that was ‘simply up the highway’. We arrived at an empty plot of land, the place his mum’s flat had been; Steven had lived there along with her earlier than she turned terminally in poor health. The block had been demolished supposedly for regeneration, which had not occurred. We stored strolling for a few minutes, then stopped. On one aspect was the block of flats the place he was staying in non permanent lodging, and on the opposite aspect was the place his sister lived. It felt as if his entire life was suffused with this sense of loss, of accepting a destiny one didn’t need. Then I took this picture.
