Close to Home

PHOTOGRAPHY

Oct 21

In Close to Home, photographer Laura McCluskey turns her lens toward her grandparents’ house on the Isle of Sheppey — a place filled with memory, love, and quiet change. Shot over a decade, the project tenderly explores family, belonging, and the healing power of returning home.

Photography Laura McCluskey

The project’s prime focus and narrative heart is 13 Acorn Street, the house where Jean, Laura’s paternal grandmother, was born and grew up to spend her adult life alongside her husband, Pat. The site of countless family gatherings and festivities as well as daily drop-ins by relatives for roast dinners and cups of tea, Jean and Pat’s home was central to McCluskey life until their final days.

In 2014, having long since moved to mainland England, Laura instinctively began documenting her grandparents, their home and Sheppey itself during each return visit. Unknowingly, she was to capture this poignant and candid testament to Jean and Pat’s last years. Together, her images sensitively portray mortality’s march as echoed through a residence rich in vital memories. The subdued dilapidation of the once-vibrant 13 Acorn Street until its emptying, underscoring time’s stubborn progress, no matter how much we may long for it to slow.

Place is a further key theme of Close to Home. The places we call home, and the tenacious hold they retain over us. The pull such spaces exert as they call us back, and how that urge persists despite our relationship to home becoming fraught – how it outlasts elongated periods of estrangement. When one’s home lies on an island, the geographic isolation only magnifies the complexity of such ties. With each journey punctuated by the mandatory crossing of bridges, both physical and psychological.

And still, we return. For Laura, her love for her grandparents and a desire to mend fractured family ties, to reconnect again and again despite the emotional toll, anchored her to Sheppey. Yet photography was to prove her most powerful healing tool. During the decade she shot in and around 13 Acorn Street, also visiting the sites of childhood escapades to rekindle memories in a bid for solace – Laura’s camera served as a bridge of its own, enabling her to stay present while inviting precious new moments of connection. Thus, incrementally, this instinctual project became a conduit for reconciliation, and for gentle healing and growth. An enduring act of love to stay Close to Home.

Each journey punctuated by the mandatory crossing of bridges, both physical and psychological.

“Close to Home” is available at Guest Editions

About Laura

Laura McCluskey (born 1987) is a London-based photographer, artist and director who works across portrait, fashion and documentary projects. To date, her work has graced the pages of Vogue, Elle, The FT Weekend Magazine, GQ, Tank, TWIN, and The Guardian among other titles. By approaching both personal and commercial shoots with the aim of creating joyful and powerful imagery, Laura reveals each subject’s innate warmth and personality. Often capturing real life as it unfolds and emotions as they arise, she finds inspiration in the beauty of the everyday as well as in human connection.

Laura’s first book ‘Blue Above’ (Guest Editions, 2019) harnessed improvised dance to explore emotional turbulence. The work was presented as a solo exhibition at Filet Gallery, featuring a short film as well as photographs from the series. She has also released several printed zines and short films, including ‘Into Orbit’, which premiered on Nowness in 2024.

To see more of her work, visit her website or follow her on Instagram

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Close to Home

In Close to Home, photographer Laura McCluskey turns her lens toward her grandparents’ house on the Isle of Sheppey — a place filled with memory, love, and quiet change. Shot over a decade, the project tenderly explores family, belonging, and the healing power of returning home.

Each journey punctuated by the mandatory crossing of bridges, both physical and psychological.

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