My life, my work has always been about family, first as a daughter, a sister, a grandchild—those roles shaped the way I viewed the work, home and abroad. In the unfamiliar and therefore exotic, I have found my own reflection, created and discovered my histories; I have seen other families and dynamics and come to see my own family and history in a new way. Now, all is changed, shaped by this ferocious tiger-love that is motherhood. I see my day to day as though an anthropologist observing a unique tribe of strange, little creatures whose language eludes me, whose actions are pure instinct and whose lives are mine to protect and bear witness to.


When I travel now it is with their sticky fingers entwined in mine, or even, when I travel without them, I awaken in the night certain I have heard the baby crying for his milk, although he is far away. Their births have changed how I look through the camera, what I photograph and why. They have become part of the landscape that I photograph, part of the exotic and unfamiliar so that each new destination becomes part of our family, part of our history.

Emmet in Belfast