I was on the train back to Edinburgh after seeing British photographer Laura Foster present her photographic series In Order to Bloom in a small art house cinema in Newcastle. The previous week I had listened to the Canadian author Sheila Heti speak about her unnecessarily (?) contentious novel Motherhood. In the days proceeding, I asked all of my colleagues whether they would like to have children: if so, why? If not, why not? I was irked by and fixated on this question. Then I saw Foster’s work, and I decided to write. On the train I Googled: ‘contemporary women photographers’, ‘visualising addiction, photography’, ‘sisterhood and motherhood pdf’ (a long-shot, but I though I’d try), ‘love as research methodology’, ‘Céline Sciamma’ and ‘Barbara Creed, women and horror’. I went to message Foster but she had already messaged me, asking for my email.

In Order to Bloom is an intimate and private portrait of the relationships held between two young women and their mothers. Both mothers live or have lived with alcohol addiction. One of the young women is Foster and the other is G, a friend that she met at university through this project. The photographs in the series are sometimes staged, with hints of the suburban horror, and sometimes found, in the sense of captured chance photographic encounters as well as re-worked photographs from family albums. In Order to Bloom, like the work of French filmmaker Céline Sciamma, directly intervenes with debates surrounding “how to look at, and make a portrait of, [the experiences of] young women” (Wilson, 2021).

The series has a golden and dream-like, onlooking gaze, comprised of cropped picture frames, obscured visions and faceless bodies that turn away from their viewers. Like remembering flashes of a dream in the morning, where everyone is and isn’t who they are and surreal holes emerge in hedges where on the other side rain is red. This distance feels like an assurance of the respect and privacy that Foster afforded her sitters. It also engenders a certain curiosity in looking, because the photographs are tactile and rich with the grain of the film but always held at an arms length from immediate comprehension. Whilst on-train Googling, one quotation comes up in The Observer, from a conversation with Sciamma in 2021, that captures what I am struggling to explain: “In all my films, it’s always the same…a few days out of the world…it’s always about female characters because they can be themselves only in a private place where they can share their loneliness, their dreams, their attitudes, their ideas”. In Order to Bloom also feels like “a few days out of the world”, a world with an unsteady sense of time, in which memory enacts itself in the present, that is the sole property of Laura, G and their mums. But this “private place” is also a uniquely feminine space, which is why, I think, it makes me feel connected.

In Order to Bloom is an exploration, for the 21st century, of the female gaze. Throughout In Order to Bloom Foster uses contemporary photographic techniques and tropes that might be expected in a work by Wolfgang Tillmans, like the deep red vine tomatoes, captured at a soft, shallow depth of field on a domestic kitchen windowsill, or by Yto Barrada, whose ironic touch is felt in the sadly funny hole in the ground that no-one seems to have fixed outside Foster’s family home. These associations cut through what could have been a nostalgic and close to the wound work of photo-therapy for Foster, and instead open her and G’s experiences up to wider conversations that extend beyond the intimacies of their personal lives. This includes contemporary portrayals of mother-daughter relationships in visual art, which often draw upon polarising tropes of the virgin and child (e.g. Alice Neel) or depict fraught relationships in which the mother is physically or emotionally absent from her family (e.g. Louise Bourgeois). This also includes visualisations of addiction, which rarely include women, and even more rarely attend to the everyday nature of addiction that Foster captures in her series.

There are few photographers who succeed in telling other people’s stories, especially surrounding experiences of addiction. In today’s socio-political climate, which itself is highly individualistic and factionalised, it is even more contentious to speak with or for another. As writer Olivia Laing notes: “a writer I was on a panel with said…that it is no longer desirable to write about the lives of other people or experiences one hasn’t had. I didn’t agree. I think writing about other people, making art about other people, is both dangerous and necessary. There are moral lines. There are limits to the known. But there’s a difference between respecting people’s right to tell or not tell their own stories and refusing to look”. Whilst Foster is implicated in the narratives that she explores, she has also positioned herself behind a camera, at a physical distance from the contents of her work. This could have been problematic, but Foster has achieved the difficult task of building a shared voice, founded on in life conversation and long and thoughtful photographic shooting sessions, in In Order to Bloom.

In this sense, the staged photographs which re-present memories that Foster formed as a child bring another character into this work — not quite another person, but a younger, more vulnerable version of herself, who acknowledges her other part in this story. One example includes a staged black and white photograph of a child’s dressing up box. Shot with minimal light and an extreme shallow depth of field, the photograph focuses the eye on a bundle of glittering tulle and sequins stuffed into a wicker box. Foster seems to be seeing something within the box to which the viewer is not privy, a sense that is heightened by the blurred peripheral vision afforded by such shallow depth of field. It has an odd and unsettling sense of foreboding. Nothing at the eye height of a child, or from a child’s gaze, centred about the act of play, should be seen in this much darkness.

This photograph is followed by a black and white photograph of G in a gingham dress in an uncannily staged outside scene — a field in which one tree blows into the centre of the photograph, whilst the rest of the idyll is as still as a Gainsborough. This is a carefully constructed shot that makes visible the agency and creative investment of both G and Foster in this project. G has turned her back to the camera, like the shot in the beach scene in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Sciamma, 2019), “the face and the eyes…are turned away or masked, turned towards an inner world that can never be wholly communicated to another, despite a shared depth” (Delmaire). This feminine space of mutual understanding, met with an acceptance of not knowing, is central to In Order to Bloom and is conjured between G and Foster as well as between the young women and their mums. In my favourite photograph, G is shot from outside of the kitchen window. When I first wrote about this photograph, I mistook this to be a portrait of Foster’s mum. Present in Foster’s gaze is respect, care and nurture, present in G’s act, the same. She is in the process of washing up, with her left hand poised on the edge of a Belfast sink. She wears a silver ring, faceted with a stone, on her index finger. Her face is brushed over by a pampas leaf, obscured, whilst her cardigan is growing upwards with green embroidered vines of flowers. It reads as an image of motherhood. This portrait is emblematic of In Order to Bloom in that it speaks of the woman to woman, mother to daughter alliance that Foster has captured (and perhaps forged) in this photographic series. The (failed) feminist project of the 20th and 21st century (to support each other, to unite) held in a single image.

In this sense, In Order to Bloom is an ethically conscious, tender portrait of addiction, motherhood, daughterhood, of Laura and G, of these young women’s relationships with their mums, and of their mums. The dream-like, ethereal quality of this photographic series speaks of and to love and respect, distance, autonomy, whilst the staged elements invite conversation about memory and its space in the present. As the Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako recently noted in conversation with Ben Harman (Director of Stills Centre for Photography), the success of her Hiroshima series was that she offered an alternative narrative to the stories of pity that dominated prevailing retellings and documents of the atrocity. Instead, she wanted to show that the people impacted by the atrocity were also ‘cool’, fashionable people, with interesting lives and human bonds.

Captions

There are few artists who succeed in telling other people’s stories. As Olivia Laing writes, "writing about other people, making art about other people, is both dangerous and necessary. There are moral lines. There are limits to the known. But there’s a difference between respecting people’s right to tell or not tell their own stories and refusing to look”.

Golden and dream-like, onlooking, comprised of cropped picture frames, obscured visions, women turned away. Sometimes staged and sometimes re-worked from family photo-albums. In Order to Bloom is unlike conventional mother-daughter portraits. This photo-series is about looking, imagining, seeing, being seen; and about living or having lived with alcohol addiction.

In Order to Bloom depicts visualisations of addiction, which rarely include women, even more rarely attend to its everyday nature. Deep red vine tomatoes, captured soft, shallow, on a kitchen windowsill. A gold chain on a freckled neck. Two ink roses on a woman's thigh. An ironic touch: a sadly funny hole in the ground outside Foster’s family home. Contemporary, modish images cut through pathos.

The photo-series echoes Berthe Morisot's impressionist paintings, which depict "maternal love as artistic attention rather than physical intimacy".

Like filmmaker Céline Sciamma, Foster explores “how to look at, and make a portrait of, [the experiences of] young women” (Wilson, 2021). Sciamma revealed to The Observer in 2021: “In all my films, it’s always the same…a few days out of the world…it’s always about female characters because they can be themselves only in a private place where they can share their loneliness, their dreams, their attitudes, their ideas”. In Order to Bloom is also “a few days out of the world”, unsteady time. But this “private place” is also uniquely feminine, which connects.

Remembering flashes of a dream in the morning where everyone is and isn’t who they are and surreal holes emerge in hedges and on the other side rain is red. It engenders a certain curiosity in looking because Foster's photographs are cropped, abstracted, tactile, rich with the grain of film then held at arms length from total comprehension.

Staged photographs re-present memories that Foster formed as a child, the work's other character. A younger, more vulnerable version of Foster, who is self and artist in a triangulation of mother, daughter, image. A staged black and white photograph of a child’s dressing up box. Shot with minimal light, extreme shallow depth of field. The eye focuses on glitter tulle and sequined frocks. Foster sees something in the box we don't, heightened by blurred peripheral vision. The extreme shallow depth of field is warm yet foreboding. A play space obscured and half seen.

Followed by a black and white of G in a gingham dress. An uncanny staged outside scene. One tree blows in a field towards the photographs centre. The rest is like a Gainsborough. Still. This shot is carefully constructed. Foster shoots, G performs. G's back turned to camera -- the beach scene in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Sciamma, 2019), “the face and the eyes…turned away or masked, turned towards an inner world that can never be wholly communicated to another, despite a shared depth” (Delmaire). A feminine space: mutual understanding, not seeing eye portals, accepting secrets.

My favourite photograph: G shot behind a kitchen window. G washes up, left hand poised on the edge of a Belfast sink. She wears a silver stone faceted ring on her index finger. Face brushed over by pampas leaf, obscured, her cardigan grows upwards in green embroidered floral vines. An image of contemporary motherhood performed by daughters. A portrait emblematic of In Order to Bloom with symbolic and living verdance. It speaks of a woman to woman, mother to daughter alliance Foster captures (perhaps forges) in her photo-series. The (failed) feminist project of the 20th and 21st century (to support each other, to unite) held in an image.

In Order to Bloom is ethically conscious. A tender portrait of addiction, motherhood, daughterhood, friendship and family. Dream-like, ethereal, this photo-series captures the agency and spirit of memory in the present.

Japanese photographer Ishiuchi Miyako said her Hiroshima series was successful because it showed the people impacted as fashionable and cosmopolitan with interesting lives and roles outside the atrocity. Foster's series is different but similarly celebrates the breadth of life intertwined with her and G's experiences, as daughters, of their mothers' addiction.