A Joining of Self

A Joining of Self is a site-specific portrait of fragmented childhood recollections of abuse, incorporating memories of different fabrics, dissociative experiences and phrases of manipulation that were used to threaten and enforce secrecy. Using photography to document, Holland pushes her boundaries by exploring a home identical to her childhood residence. By stitching phrases that were said to silence her onto familiar fabrics—some of which were recreated from family album images—and by choosing to record these memories on film using the abuser’s twin lens reflex camera, Holland confronts her inner struggles and transforms her emotions and recollections into visual expression. Long withheld memories are subtly exposed and hint at and communicate the unsaid. A reclamation of power, A Joining of Self comes face to face with Holland’s past and ultimately breaks a silence that has been kept for forty years.

Available to purchase from The Library Project.

Fair Days

Fair Days is a 24-page zine of SX-70 Polaroid photographs, taken at Country Fair Days in Counties Meath and Cavan between 2006 and 2008 and manipulated by hand to create painterly effects.

Fair Days is available to purchase on ko-fi.com

An Act of Madness (2019) – Out of Print

An Act of Madness is a collaborative project which was inspired by the few details known about writer Martin Towey’s great grandmother Bridget Towey (née Flanagan) and the circumstances surrounding her committal to Connaught District Lunatic Asylum in October 1914. Martin asked me to collaborate on this project by providing images that would create a context for the story and we published a book and exhibition in 2019. The content of the book is currently being written as a playscript.