Sophie Harris Taylor

0:05[Applause]

0:12hello ok I'm gonna do my best tonight to talk to you a little bit about my most recent project that was published at the end of last year as a book with Hawks and mini press but firstly I'm just gonna tell you a little bit about my background and I guess show you a bit of work and what I do here are the slides so okay I put some of my work up for her to give you a bit of context but basically I kind of cover a range of subject matters but there's sort of some consistent themes throughout my work I think most of my personal work comes from some form of sort of self exploration. And I tend to work with a lot of people.

1:00And I kind of capture aspects of them that I personally can relate to it's sort of some I guess it's often some sort of self reflection I always shoot with available light or natural light and I kind of find this process quite liberating and quite an organic way to work ultimately I think I've always seeking some sort of emotion and honesty in my work. And I'm drawn to moments of sort of vulnerability and looking at relationships via the kind of relationships we have within ourselves or the relationships I have with my subjects or the relationships in the photographs if that makes sense ♪

1:48so I think I found over the years my kind of images have become slightly less snapshot they started out at the beginning is quite kind of snapshot aesthetic and slightly more considered and I always seem to be sort of battling with the balance between documentation. And something slightly more staged so in the work here obviously it's a lot more formal than some of the previous work.

2:14But that kind of brings me on to sisters which is what I'm here to talk to you about which I think sits somewhere between the middle of those two things.

2:23So I'm gonna start just kind of rolling through some of the images just so you can get an idea of the project I'm talking about this kind of came about because I began reflecting on my own relationship with my sister and we've always had quite a difficult relationship which has of left us at some distance and I think in some weird way I was trying to kind of speak to other sisters and almost find the answers for my own flawed relationship by kind of speaking to and kind of working with other sisters I started off initially just putting out a casting call on social media saying I wanted to work with some sisters and kind of you know photograph them.

3:07And I decided to shoot the sisters within their own homes because I felt like firstly it could it would make the sisters much more comfortable being in their own spaces in their own kind of bedrooms or living rooms but also it would often in some cases like this image add a bit more context to I guess the story and the narrative two years later I'd ended up somehow shooting just about 80 sets of sisters and I don't really know how it kind of ended up getting on to such a large scale I kind of just kept going and going and almost wanting to I guess keep exploring this relationship that I think is I guess kind of overlooked quite often so I think the yeah I guess the images somewhere between kind of family more fat more kind of formal family portrait. And I guess snapshots I also at the same time is photographing them I decided to interview the sisters but these were kind of quite informal conversations where the sisters was kind of talk and share stories and they almost turned into kind of mini therapy sessions in some weird way just reflecting on their kind of their relationship basically I'm gonna now all talk a little bit in depth about kind of the making of some of the images have got an image this one coming up.

4:44This is actually I kind of filled this out because it's my favorite image from the series and it kind of I'm glad it made you laugh and it's kind of at the time when I took the photo it really wasn't what I was going for what I had in mind and I was really disappointed when I left the shoot and I kind of think sometimes when you have a preconceived idea of what you want it's not necessarily always gonna be the right thing or the best thing. And we basically the shoots in general lasted anywhere between ten minutes and kind of an hour depending on how long we had I had with the sisters and how much time they had and also how comfortable they were kind of in front of the camera and in this case with grace and Jessie grace the sixteen-year-old girl was at school and rushed back on her lunch break and I think she was in the middle of kind of exams or revision and the met her mom sat Jessie on her lap and she just wouldn't stop crying and then they'd pass her back to the mom and she'd be fine and then it just kept going back and forth for about 5-10 minutes and eventually I just had to shoot and I think they were quite disappointed and they were kind of like oh do you want you know you want to come back.

6:01And I was like no no it's fine like anyway I walked away feeling quite deflated and then in hindsight realized when looking through the edits and making select that. Actually.

6:11This is the best thing that could have happened it's the most honest kind of representation of I guess in some ways of sisterhood but also the situation. And I think perhaps some of the other images fell in some ways slightly more force than I would have liked to they're moving on.

6:28This is just so the book that we ended up producing we only wanted to include one image per set of sisters and obviously I had a bit of a tough time choosing some of the edits and these sisters Minnie and Coco I I was really drawn to the image on the right right something left on my screen on the right no on your left sorry initially and that was what I really I think I got emotionally attached to it after I took the photograph and the publishers kept saying that they were looking for something a little bit more a little bit more lighthearted not so somber and I think they were right I'd kind of spent the whole series trying not to create like cheesy family portraits that some of the shots ended up feeling a little to kind of lacking in sort of light heartedness so in the end they found this image which is the one we ended up going for and I don't know if you can tell but I can see the girl behind is sort of slightly smirking and it's got that yeah bit more of a light heartedness there was one where they were like bursting out laughing but I refused that.

7:41So yeah.

7:45So that's just to give you this next image I've pulled out to talk about because it was probably my most challenging image for me to take and that's purely because I was so used to working one-on-one with people and obviously the sisters twos was one thing threes another.

8:01And then I knew I had this sheet of six sisters coming up. And I was yeah.

8:06I was really nervous because I was like how how am I gonna make this work. And I arrived at the house and all the girls had just got back from holiday and the house was like really chaotic suitcases everywhere they all shared rooms but there's a complete mess and there was basically nowhere to shoot and initially I had them all stood on the landing with a skylight over them and honestly it looked like the worst band shot ever like it just all four and I just kept thinking I was taking these shots and I was just thinking what am I going to do because they're such great subjects but I'm you know I'm like the worst photographer ever.

8:41So anyway I thought we'd I thought we'd found everywhere in their home.

8:45And then I asked to see their parents bedroom and they opened the door and it was like this absolute Haven big double bed like coming through the way no and I kind of got them all to jump on the bed and that's where this shot and kind of some others were taken and I guess are quite like the fact that you've got the Madonna that sort of symbolism but also the fact that it's looking down on them the fact that they're all on their parents bed I find quite symbolic but also I just for me it's an image that I think today I still feel was a challenge but I kind of got over that challenge I pushed myself so that's why I pulled that out.

9:21And I'm gonna quickly move on to just yeah a few more edits all outtakes I should say of these girls unity and Zeta which are really fun to work with they were quite playful in front of the camera and we did quite a few setups but in the end I went for this image which I really liked the juxtaposition of them obviously they're quite young beautiful girls but they're kind of sat in a very formal almost like adult like manner and I'd quite like that kind of almost identically and I think at the time when I made the shot they were kind of messing around and I said girls you know sit up straight and they kind of like both kind of looked at me with this sort of stark expression.

10:06So I went for that shot in the book.

10:09And then we ended up using this shot as the cover image I think the cover in general covers covers of books in general are really difficult to get right. And I think I really didn't want to put one face to the project after working with so many sisters but I felt this was probably the most graphic image and obviously you can't see their faces but also it's kind of a little bit cliche and a little bit guess a little bit light but I think it was probably the right choice so then the books arrived you might not have seen them.

10:41But they came out yeah end of last November and I think they've been doing pretty well and Hoxton mini press were really great to work with and lastly I'm just gonna end on because I kind of briefly touched on the fact that I interviewed extensively all these sisters that I shot I ended up working with a really great writer called Emma Finn more and together we pulled out of quotes from each set of sisters or little dialogue that sat beside each image and then at the back of the book she ended up writing a kind of summary for each set of sisters so again it just adds that bit more of a context I think at the moment the project's become this publication.

11:26And I think sometime somewhere down the line if I were to exhibit it I'd really want to use the sound bytes from the recorded interviews because that I think the voice is in general just will add so much. But yeah that's it [Applause]