Invisible Images

Invisible Images was an exhibition by artist-photographer Ted Duncan. Ted was brought up in care, living with various foster families during the 1970s and early 1980s. The exhibition was an emotional journey through Ted’s childhood memories and feelings of abandonment culminating in her acceptance of herself and her ‘inner’ child.

Invisible Images was influenced by the notion of photo-therapy, as developed by artists Jo Spence and Rosy Martin, through which images from family albums became the focus for personal therapeutic art work. Spence and Martin recreated scenes depicted in original family photograph albums and changed them to represent personal recollections of the event. In this way they created the missing images in their family albums, validating their individual memories of experiences of family events and relationships.

Ted Duncan’s took this idea but, having no family or family album from which to choose existing photographs she created the missing images to tell her version of her remembered childhood. It is a story of coming to terms with living in a children’s home and having no mother and no family. Her reasons for showing the work included a desire to reach out to others who have had similar experiences and to inform those who have had a more conventional childhood.

Images: © Ted Duncan