Madeleine Morlet is a photographer from London. She studied Classics and English at Kings College London and for almost a decade has worked across both video and stills with companies such as Ridley Scott Associates, Vice, i-D and Somesuch. Approaching photography as a self-taught artist, these skills have formed the foundation of her discipline. Her photography is cinematic, dark and deeply romantic (Romantics are often failed classicists).
Madeleine is the Features Editor for Teeth Magazine and teaches at Maine Media Workshops. She is currently based between Maine and LA. ‘I Promise I’ll Never Forget’ will show at Dowling Walsh Gallery this September 2019.
I Promise I’ll Never Forget
‘I Promise I’ll Never Forget’ is a dramatization of adolescence that serves to examine identity and personal relationships through the construction of imaginative narratives. These photographs were taken in Mid-Coast Maine where recurring locations, costumes and a local cast bind this series together while shattering any illusions the scenarios are real. Instead, ‘I Promise I’ll Never Forget’ uses adolescence as an archetype for our times, pairing the desire to blend and belong with the need to define and differentiate ourselves. This series holds a mirror to my own coming of age, as a foreigner and new mother, experiences that have been punctuated by a youthful ambition for friendship and concurrent feelings of isolation. It is a personal manifestation and a reflection of how our uncertain and self-conscious times are not met alone, but within and amongst our communities. Cinematic and at times unsettling, the images tap into a history of storytelling as a means of escape, they act as a fictional counterweight to my real experiences as I establish myself in this place and within the role of motherhood.
‘I Promise I’ll Never Forget’ is a love letter to youth, a memento written as I too face the precipice of adulthood. Here is a new vantage point, one in which I am nostalgic both for adolescence as it has been lived and motherhood as it is being lived, recognizing in both their brevity and poignancy. How daring it is to make such extravagant promises, knowing as we do, that memories are as fleeting as life itself.
To view more of Madeleine Morlet’s work please visit her website.