A focus on portraits of my two youngest children, this project began as an emotional-theory study into my own (sometimes manic) protective feelings and fears about my children…that feeling that as a mother, I could rip someone’s head off with my bare hands to save my child. Unfortunately, whilst working on the series, I was given something to be truly fierce about. Through the power of the internet and the evil in the heart of mankind, we became victims of The Creeps (who steal images for predatory gain). Like the devil-lion of The Bible, they roam around the world wide web, seeking whom they may devour. Because of the anonymity of the digital age, I cannot break their teeth, and though I desperately tried, I was completely helpless. The series then entered a second phase post-creeps. Many of the diptychs re-formed, and the narratives of the images changed as I began to consider the fact that I would kill for my kids but couldn’t when my enemy was invisible. The work started to take on a lot of Biblical imagery as I began to face my own helplessness and look to an ultimate justice, allowing me to create images which, although at first glance might look horrific, carry a larger narrative of protection and sacrifice.

Bio
flannery o’kafka is an artist-mother-photographer working and living in the wild Glasgow suburbs. Her work has been exhibited in the UK with Morphe Arts and Street Level Photoworks, and in the US with Harrison Center for the Arts and Michele Mariaud Gallery. A selection from I would kill for you: a study in maternal ferocity was included in the 2014 Frames photo projections during the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and also shown recently with Nomas Projects in Dundee, Scotland.

Along with three other photographers, she has recently co-founded The Mothering Sunday Collective, which has released its first publication White this month.

Often collaborating with her own five children, she also shoots widely for UK and international publications and designers. She has been a visiting artist at Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art photographing partially-sighted children in sculpture workshops

For more information, please contact flannery o'kafka at: flanneryokafka@gmail.com or visit: flanneryokafkaphotography.blogspot.co.uk

Interview with flannery o'kafka here.