from the sofa to the duvet

I accidentally exposed the same roll of film 4 times over the course of a year. Due to this factor people who have never met in real life share sofas in these images, ghosted over backdrops they have never actually visited. It all comes together to create a very real tableau of my last year and the strangely liminal experience of being a 16 year old girl. There are the halloween costumes, practical puffer jackets, brightly coloured hats and backpacks of our childhoods, family homes with photos on the mantle pieces and beloved dogs, wide toothy grins, harsh school lighting and birthday balloons. Foraging for apples and buttered toast late at night in a friend’s kitchen. My 9 year old brother features with tousled hair, scuffed clothing and gappy teeth and we don’t look so different to him, it is clear we love the artifice of his dressing up box more than him. The fire in the corner of so many pictures is where we threw our GCSE materials after our exams ended, signifying carefree celebration and the start of a long summer. In the light it casts we raise poorly rolled cigarettes and glasses of cheap prosecco to some nebulous adulthood we aren’t far from. Eat Tesco meal deals we paid for ourselves and gossip constantly about who’s after who. There are stoned eyes outlined persistently by liner and sparkles or concealed by sunglasses even at night, indoors. The local park, my school, my grandparents’ garden and the house I have lived in as long as I can remember are the main settings, apart from when I go to a gig or venture out of my little corner of London for a different reason. My parents and a roster of family friends dip in and out, all the disparate elements and people collage together to create my memories of a uniquely fun yet challenging time that I can already anticipate nostalgia for, though I have not left it.

Photographer:
ivyen
Uploaded:
2023-01-31
Albums:
layers of 2022/23, olympus compact
More photos by ivyen