IN THE FRAME
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“Shrouded by familiarity and insignificance, and failing to meet our expectations of Kodak moments, the second shift is largely absent from photographs of home and family.” – Clare Gallagher
“This photograph of my sons immersed in reading, their limbs and attention tangled together, was one of the earliest I shot in my six year project The Second Shift.
This is the term given to the hidden shift of housework and childcare primarily carried out by women on top of their paid employment.
It is physical, mental and emotional labour which demands effort, skill and time but is unpaid, unequally distributed and largely unrecognised.
Shrouded by familiarity and insignificance, and failing to meet our expectations of Kodak moments, the second shift is largely absent from photographs of home and family.
I published the series as a photobook with writing by Belfast poet Leontia Flynn. Together, the images, text and design represent a destabilising of the tired tropes of home as tranquil haven and an attempt to recognise the complexity and value of this invisible work. It is a call for resistance to the capitalist, patriarchal and aesthetic systems which ignore it.”
Words and Photograph: Clare Gallagher
Photography & The Social Gazelaunches on September 22nd and runs at Photo Museum Ireland until November 5.
