interview between Madeleine Morlet and alice dison.

info.

Photographer: Madeleine Morlet

Madeleine Morlet is a British-American photographer and writer. Taking cues from literature and cinema, she develops long-term projects that draw on personal experience, both directly and indirectly. Her work explores and tests the possibilities and limitations of the photographic medium, with a particular interest in the relationship between subject and environment. Her practice is research-led and informed by her work as a creative nonfiction writer.

Madeleine studied Classics with English at King's College London and Filmmaking at the London Film School, and holds an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck, University of London. She has worked as a photography instructor since 2018, notably at Maine Media Workshops and the Penumbra Foundation, with a focus on the narrative potential of photography and the photobook form.

Her work has been recognised by PhotoVogue, the Lucie Foundation, the Pollux Prize, the Julia Margaret Cameron Award, the OD Photo Prize, the Felix Schoeller Prize, the Belfast Photo Festival, among others. Her publication The Quarry (2022), supported by the Maine Arts Commission, is sold out at Photo-Eye.

project

The Body Is Not A Thing was conceived during lockdown. Like many women with young children, I experienced a loss of autonomy. In America, where I was living, the appetite for regressive politics was growing. I felt frustrated with the unrelatable and sanitised imagery that dominates mainstream representations of motherhood. In the year Roe V. Wade was overturned I travelled from my home, a small rural community in New England, to Los Angeles. I found myself drawn to the supposed duality of our sexual desire and our ability to give birth. I photographed actors, dancers, sex workers, and mothers. I thought I understood how to cast the female gaze. Later, as I reviewed the images, I found myself confronted by the enduring influence of the male gaze. I am forced to acknowledge the historical associations of female nudity, the provocation of shame, the influence of pornography, and internalised misogyny. Observing women intimately, interplaying sexuality and motherhood, is uncomfortable – but should it be?

interview.

AD: Your style and approach to photography seems so natural, like second nature - an extension of yourself. Do you remember one of the first photos you took when you realized you have a talent in capturing images? And what was that photo of if you remember….

MM: My mother was a photographer. As a child, she encouraged me to read books and take photographs, and was always happy to spend money on these things. I still have many of the photographs I took in childhood: albums of out-of-focus landscapes, museum visits, and friends from school. My brothers and I grew up in transit; we moved between cities, countries, and continents every few years. Around the age of ten or eleven we lived in South Korea. My mother would sometimes bring me along to take pictures with her. It was on one of these shoots, photographing Mrs. Kim and her two daughters, I identified three photographs that were compositionally strong. I could sense these images stood out from the rest of the roll and that, sequenced together, they told a story. It was the first time I critically looked at my photographs, and I think about these images often.

AD: What a gift, to be nurtured by your parent(s) to explore photography like that and to find a life passion at a young age.

AD: You mention in The Body is not a Thing how you went with one intention in mind then came back after spending time with the images and seeing something different, is this something you have found in larger projects you work on? I love how projects can be fluid even after capturing.

MM: The disparity between intention and result is so interesting. I teach photography workshops, and an exercise I love to do with my students is to have them present their projects for feedback without providing any context for the work, and then to use this feedback to identify the gap between what they think the project is about and how it is received. Previously, I spent five years working on a project titled I Promise I’ll Never Forget, which explored identity and belonging through the lens of adolescence. This work started as staged narratives––using props and costumes for the subjects––but after years of getting to know these local teenagers, I began to photograph them as themselves. This development in the project really highlighted for me the tension between reality and invention in photography, which I still find so engaging.

The Body Is Not a Thing was different. I collaborated on the concept with my friend Annabel Crook, who found the subjects and produced the shoots. The project was shot in two one-week blocks. The work that I made in the first shooting block, in May of 2022, was as intended––capturing sexuality and motherhood in ways that felt like a celebration of women’s bodies and lives. I had only planned to shoot for one week but when I got the film back, the project felt incomplete. It wasn’t quite right. I came back to Los Angeles in August of the same year and something had shifted in the vibe. Between the first shoot and the second shoot Roe v. Wade was overturned. Annabel was pregnant, now in her third trimester. I was really feeling the financial pressure of making more personal work. It was this week that turned the project on its head. It felt like it took on a life of its own, that I was responding to the subjects, the environments, the mood, rather than directing the work. I didn’t feel in control.

AD: That second trip really worked for you and your images. Because what you captured and are showing to me feels very personal and raw.

AD: I'm drawn to the image Bebe, can you tell me more? The warmness of the bathroom, the gaze is strong yet still seems unsure.

MM: I photographed Bebe in August of 2022. Annabel had coordinated three or four women a day for me to meet. The tone of the week––or the dynamic of us coming into these women’s homes––created something like a therapeutic space. I couldn’t have anticipated how much these women would share, or how heavily their stories would sit with me. I hadn't had an experience like this shooting before. Bebe was like an antidote, perhaps one of the most genuine and kind women I have ever met. I felt this real connection to her, and was deeply touched by everything she shared with me while we worked together. She grew up in Maine, which is where I lived at the time, and had moved to Los Angeles as a teenager to get away from small-town small-mindedness. Her dream was to work in entertainment and fashion. Now she walks for Balenciaga and is in Ariana Grande music videos.

AD: Do you know your subjects before you photograph them, or is it more of a get to know while you document? It’s beautiful the openness that is shown by the subjects and being so unarmed by the camera.

Like Marley and Josh, that says a lot about you that who you are photographing feel so comfortable with you.

MM: To answer your question directly, in all my projects, there are subjects I know before photographing them and others I get to know while photographing them. With Marley, we had worked together before. She is unbelievable in front of the camera and there was no doubt that she would be included in this project. Her husband Josh is also very comfortable in himself. They are very open people and have great chat. Annabel and I went back and forth via text for over a year discussing who the subjects would be for this project.

Many of the people I ended up photographing in the first shooting week came directly from Annabel’s personal network. To know Annabel is to love her, she is a Scorpio, mama of three, and has a ride or die energy. These women trusted her implicitly, and this trust was extended to me. The women I photographed in the second shooting week were less personally connected to Annabel, they came through a friend of a friend, and we were all meeting for the first time. It was such an intimate experience. A handful of these women have become close friends.

AD: As a mother, your self portrait (on the about page) shows the beautiful combination of photographing while still being with your children. How have you found your images change since becoming a mom, or have you not noticed any shift in vision, interest of subject matter etc.

How do you think this project will influence your current and future work?

MM: (This portrait of me with my daughter Bo, holding the tripod by my legs, was taken by Cig Harvey.)

Yes, my photography has changed significantly. Motherhood opened something up in me, a kind of steady determination that is hard to describe. I have two daughters, and I know that they will be looking to me as an example for what is possible––just as I looked to my own mother for this example. My ambitions feel less centred on me as an individual and more grounded in responsibility. My sense of self has been deeply shaped by my relationship with my mother, so motherhood existed in my work as a subject and theme long before I became a parent.

The Body Is Not a Thing marked a seismic shift in how I approach projects. I will continue expanding my practice using both photography and writing. I am better equipped, coming out of this project, to take responsibility for sharing other people’s experiences alongside my own. I am grateful for the challenges that come with having my world view expanded through meeting and working with people. And I feel a real sense of excitement about the freedom and connection that comes from working in this way, which I’m carrying into my next major project.