Photo Journal Monday: Debbie Naylor
All text and Images by Debbie Naylor
‘Forty Seven Christmases’ is composed of a series of 150 photographs of Christmas trees, that serves as a metaphor for time and memory, and explores issues such as birth, mental health, death, womanhood and all its associated experiences.
Presented in book form, it tells a very personal and intimate story. Having suffered with depression on and off for most of my life, the work came about from the idea that Christmas time appeared to me to be the only reoccurring period where I recall being happy and content. I became interested, some would say obsessed, in the visual representation of this period and in turn, began to question my experience of it and what it was that I felt gave me this illusion of happiness. This exploration led me to consider Christmas as a marker of time and reflect on my life and identity as a middle-aged woman.
Within the book, a combination of text and photographic images present a visual narrative, packed with symbolism and allegory conveying an ethereal approach to a personal story. To illustrate the different emotional periods and stages of my life, attention was paid to the visual language within the images and enabled me to draw on the past, as well as pay attention to and appreciate the fragile present. It was a conscious decision to make some more literal or ambiguous than others and doing so, I hope the work allows opportunity to engage with the concept but at the same time allow agency for the viewer.
The process of making the work took me on an emotional journey and one which was therapeutic in relation to my mental health at the time. It gave me a vehicle to be more open about depression, especially with my children, and space to reflect coming to terms with the nature and pattern of the illness, something that I had previously ignored and avoided dealing with.
