My Boyfriend and Other Animals was part of The Loving Gaze, a symposium and accompanying publication programmed by Susan Andrews and Fiona Yaron-Field, from London Metropolitan University.  I presented Heather McDonough’s moving work September Song on her mother’s terminal illness, and Heather presented a selection of photographs that I had made in France in 2002, together under the title My Boyfriend and Other Animals –

‘Melanie’s images seem to arrest or suspend time, to highlight a notion, smell or sound…’

‘Shaun acts more like an object, and rather than these images being portraits of a particular person… they almost cloud the persona of Shaun. He is obviously aware of Melanie’s close proximity to him. She looks at him, not as part of recording the events of their life together; Shaun participates passively like the horse or the robin, becoming part of nature.’ Heather McDonough, publication text

These pictures were taken during a few months in rural France where we had gone to make work together, the images are the closest in my work to slip between the pictures I take for art, and those I take for life.