Upon All The Living and The Dead
I started taking these photographs when I was very unhappy. I had not been looking after myself and reached a crisis that brought me home to Ireland.
Charlotte Self
Photography 2026
My practice is largely rooted in family, memory, and grief. I make work about what is closest to me in the hope of transforming the personal into the universal.
I came to photography as a way of overcoming my fear of loss. For me, it is all about collecting, about preserving. I have been doing this – obsessively photographing people, places and things – since I was given a second-hand smartphone for my twelfth birthday.
I am not as comfortable with language and find making images is the only way I can truly express myself.
I am awkward talking about myself or my work. I am Irish, a woman, dyslexic, dyspraxic, obsessive compulsive, a twin, the youngest of six, a student… but although these things describe me, they do not define me. What defines me is that I am, will always be, a photographer.
charlotte@charlotteself.com www.charlotteself.com →
Upon All The Living and The Dead
I found myself haunted by my birth father's alcoholism and suicide — even though he had been dead for thirteen years.
Upon All The Living and The Dead
A year on, I am no longer unhappy, and I find it difficult to look at these images because they drag me back to a time and place I don't wish to return to.
Upon All The Living and The Dead
This is about what I have already lost and also about what I am terrified of losing. They are about impermanence. When I took them, I was grieving — grieving in advance — for people who are very much alive.