Pictures From The Garden

Pictures from the Garden is a collection of seven powerful photographic essays made by leading UK photographers in response to Paddy Summerfield’s influential book, Mother and Father.

Summerfield’s 2014 publication, set mainly in his parents’ north Oxford house and garden, is a poignant and durational examination of his relationship with his parents as their lives together faded. On publication Summerfield received wide praise with the Guardian’s Sean O’Hagan describing Mother and Father as a “...profoundly sad and beautiful book”.

In Pictures from the Garden the photographers, each of whom has drawn inspiration from Mother and Father, travelled to Summerfield’s house in Oxford to discover a personal route to explore the emotions and themes that were evoked in the book.

By photographing in the same space that set the scene for Summerfield’s original work on his parents, the photographers imbued themselves in the physical and psychological world depicted in its pages.

The relationship that connects us with those that brought us into the world is universal and yet unique in every instance. Pictures from the Garden represents seven independent journeys taken to discover the nature of the most complex relationship that is common to us all.