Pictures from the Garden

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 about 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 di