- Venue
- Diemar Noble Photography
- Location
- London
An emaciated woman lies across a bed collapsed in exhaustion. Made up yet prematurely aged, her expression defines a battle of resilience and suffering. The woman rests her head on her partner, An older man, who lays a comforting hand across her face. The contrast of young and aged skin. Books and food wrappers strewn across the bed. Ink spots on the duvet. The exhibition by photographer Jessie Gunhammar overflows with these moments of intimate, elegiac and personal narrative.
Gunhammar’s subjects are her twin sister Jess and her partner Stan. Both battle with illness; Jess with Lupus disease and Stan with Parkinsons. While Parkinson’s disease has a public profile the exhibition reveals the painful story of the little known Lupus disease. Lupus is a chronic illness in which the sufferer's immune system attacks it own bodily tissues; a type of ‘self allergy’. An illness without cause or cure.
Images of the couples’ battles with illness are tempered by those of resilience and companionship. A dressing table half covered with pills and half with toiletries. Scribbled messages of reassurance. Jess and Stan’s world contracts to their bedroom. Their bed is an island where the ongoing struggle is played out. The photos recall the work of Nan Goldin, the bed is imagined equally as a place of intimacy and of frailty or mortality. The images the exhibited here are of a deeply intimate nature. As Geoff Dyer notes in his book The Ongoing Moment a photo of a bed always undresses the owner.
Yet in Gunhammar’s work looking into the world of Jess and Stan comes from a personal perspective. Jennie Gunhammar also suffers from Lupus disease and shares the difficulties of her twin sister. She does not look on as a outsider, but as a participant in the drama. There is certainly a biographical element in these pictures of the photographer’s twin. Therefore Gunhammar’s photos explore the therapeutic possibilities of the photography. Do they succeed in this? Perhaps the title of the exhibition suggests the confusion, risk and difficulty of the journey Gunhammar has undertaken.
