Carolyn Lefley’s work is about photographic memory and the domestic environment. Her work has an intimate mode of address that focuses on the average suburban house and the decorative and spatial effects that make it a ‘home’. In the series ‘Home’, Lefley revisited her childhood home to document the spaces there. She wanted to capture a darker, almost unfamiliar side to this house which she grew up in. The pictures were taken at night and combine the darkened private interior with the warm glow of suburbia outside. This project led Lefley onto a more psychological notion of what constitutes a home. The series ‘Belonging’ consists of photographs of an abandoned doll’s house. One of its most significant effects is to produce a disorientating feeling of things being out of scale. The compressed space of the doll’s house is strangely transformed by Lefley as the photographic enlargement restores to the miniature a human scale. And yet something is not right. Dim artificial lighting produces a nocturnal effect and suggests feelings of estrangement. The bold and over-size wallpaper pattern compound the unsettling experience of this uncanny space. These pictures evoke memories of childhood and suburban gloom. These rooms become potential sites for the ‘unhomely’ disruptions that occur in the darkest fairy tales. The series took inspiration from ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’, which Lefley sees as a story about the search for a identity and a place to belong, a home.
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Carolyn has a BA in Fine Art and MA in Photography. She currently teaches photography part time at both Central St. Martins and Thames Valley University. Carolyn has recently been selected as a UK winner for the Magenta Foundation emerging photographer award for her series ‘Home’. Her images are included in the publication Flash Forward 2007 by Susan Bright. She has exhibited in numerous shows in London, including ‘Dorm’ at the Viewfinder Photography Gallery in 2007 and ‘Chapter One’ at Dray Walk Gallery in 2006. In 2005, she undertook a two month teaching and photography residency at Kathmandu University.
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