LIP member Celine Marchbank‘s Tulip – a heart-rending photographic portrayal of a daughter’s last weeks with her mother – has been published by Dewi Lewis after a successful crowdfunding campaign. Dewi Lewis Publishing is recognised as one of the leading photographic publishers in the world, and Celine is delighted that Tulip is now available to order.
In September 2009 Celine’s mother, Sue Miles, was diagnosed with lung cancer and a brain tumour. While trying to come to terms with the fact she was dying, Celine decided to document the time her mother had left by photographing during her last few months in her Camden home. She looked at the things that made Sue uniquely her; the details of the house she knew so well and the things she realised would also be gone when her mother was.
Her mother’s love of flowers was a beautiful part of her personality; the house was always full of them, and as she photographed them she realised they were symbolic of what was happening – they represented happiness, love, kindness and generosity, but also isolation, decay, and finally death.
The final project, Tulip, is named after her mother’s favourite flower, and has been exhibited around the UK and internationally. The work has been nominated for awards including the prestigious European Publishers Award and the Deutsche Bank Awards in 2011. It has featured in a range of magazines, including fLIP, and The Telegraph Magazine.