This project intentionally confuses a hotel room with a room in a tenement house by doing the washing in a hotel bathroom with a washboard. The housing crises referenced are a hundred years apart. The context has changed, but the chores for the women involved remain the same. Children must be cared for, nursed back to health when they become ill, provided with nourishing food, dressed in clean clothes, and brought to school.
The photography used for the Cyanotypes is my own (with the exception of the historical images). I wanted the images of hands doing domestic work to convey work that is often taken for granted, referred to as “labours of love”. The making of Cyanotypes (an old photographic technique) involves similar processes: washing, rinsing, hanging out to dry.
'Cyanos in the breeze'
'Wash Room'
'Washing Machine'
'Cyanos Hanging'
'Rinsing'
'Tallow Vests'
'Hands folding vest'
'For Doing the Washing'