Shona Morgan
When working on a project, what’s your creative process?
It’s changed a lot over the past couple of years. I have a few different strands of projects that I’m working on slowly, which I pick up and follow as and when I feel more drawn to a specific one. I take pictures very intuitively, with an ongoing interest in returning, connection, and memory - but each project has its own parameters, such as a specific place that it’s tied to, a different camera to use, or a prompt for photographing. Alongside these projects, I also photograph more loosely, without initially having anything specific in mind, and sometimes those images have eventually led to new ideas, through noticing recurring themes over time.
Since finishing university in 2022, I can’t develop and scan my film as often, so there’s usually at least a few months in between seeing anything new. This increased time of knowing what I’ve photographed and hoped for, but not knowing how it’ll turn out yet, gives things more time to settle. I spend longer sitting with the images I already have and my shifting understanding of them. This has also encouraged me to use other mediums, to keep thinking about and interacting with my ideas in different ways. I write a lot and have been using watercolour, collage, inks, and most recently, ceramics. Each winter, I also make books of some current works in progress, as another way of staying connected to my images and seeing how they sit together.
Please share the story behind a piece of work.
Right after graduating, I started taking polaroids - on a practical level, it allowed me to continue producing something photographic that I could see straight away. Being at university helped me to get back into reading regularly, and I felt really interested in the strong sense of connection and meaning that I found in authors exploring a specific feeling, an atmosphere, with precision - in art's potential to share experiences in all their tones and textures, allowing us to feel less alone in them. To create commonality and kinship, even between strangers. This was an emotional time for me, with a lot of change: writing and photographing when strong emotions came up felt really helpful, to have places to put that emotion and find it reflected back at me, held in something else, something I could show others.
The working title is A Hundred Other Days. While my understanding of the project has shifted a lot over the past few years, change and the emotional tides it brings are constant. Having all of these images to look back upon helps me to remember - as the title alludes to - all the other times where things have felt hard, or confusing, or distant. There are also some really warm images in there, a lot of tenderness and hopefulness - so it’s a reminder that those feelings will come back, too. That the prospect of change can be a really hopeful thing, not just something to worry about.
Any unusual (if there is such a thing) inspiration?
Another project that I’ve been working on, Palace, was inspired by a dream I had as a teenager. The dream took place somewhere meaningful to me, and I’ve gone there once a year for the past few years, to spend time in that space and take photos. The place itself is actually quite tourist-y and busy, whereas in the dream it was completely empty and silent. There’s something I enjoy about translating the real location into the feeling I had then. Seeking out quiet, small details, dreaminess. It’s become a bit of a ritual for me - so far I’ve gone on my birthday, my 24th, 25th, and 26th ones. It’s a way to reflect on change and mark the years passing, within the imagery of the garden, where things are always growing, shedding, and unfurling. It serves a similar purpose as the initial dream - finding calm and connection when those things feel lacking.
There’s this element of worrying that by thinking back to that dream so much, and returning to spend time there in this specific way, I’ll alter my memory of it. This fear is something that I’ve folded into the work - I’ve made books of my images so far, on graph paper that I used for college, back when I initially had the dream. The paper is really thin and kind of slippery, it doesn’t absorb the ink that well at first, so when printed on both sides it ends up creating these different lines across the page and over the images, obscuring and extending them.
What is important to you when you’re in the process of doing work?
Feeling really connected to whatever I’m creating work about, and having conversations - with those close to me, in a crit group, with myself through some form of making or with the book I’m currently reading. Since a lot of what I hope for when I make work, similarly to when I’m looking at someone else’s work, is to find connection, then seeing ideas through someone else's eyes feels really key to what I find propelling. Having those conversations is always exciting - and being authentically curious and open in what I’m making, using it initially as an outlet for something, feels like an important groundwork towards creating something that others might feel curious about and connect with, too.
What can be missing in that process?
Time and energy - the things that allow for the kind of moments of connection that I enjoy in my work. There are times where I see something that really inspires me out of the blue in the middle of a busy day and jot it down for later. But most often, it takes putting some time aside and reading, painting, walking, photographing, looking through my archive, or writing for a while to get to a place where I feel like I’m really making progress in my thinking and am in the right mindset. Even when things do come up more unexpectedly, I think it’s often because I’ve been sticking with those habits that nourish feeling and noticing. Life gets busy and it can feel hard to make the time, but I definitely feel better for it when I do - days drift by a little less quickly.
What would you like to add in your future projects?
I want to keep on developing my writing, and probably to write some things that are less directly linked to photography, even if I pair them with images at a later stage. I want to keep making books and trying things out within that, without feeling like there’s one perfect layout or sequence to be reached. I’ve also been enjoying combining photography with other mediums more - I made a stitched collage of my images last year, recently I’ve tried printing my photographs on top of my watercolours, and a few months back I made a clay frame to hold polaroids and words, which was a really fun and different way of interacting with my images.
Since I think about connection or kinship a lot with my work, I do want to try and get back to sharing it a bit more too, making sure I’m having conversations and hearing about other people’s work in that way as well. There was a time right after graduating where it felt like I was too focused on trying to get my work out there, and it made me feel very distant from it, by looking at it through the eyes of potential others too much - but I think there’s a balance to be found. Mostly, I want to stay curious and excited about my practice. To have a solid rooting in it, a clear but fluid understanding that ideas can grow from.
What’s upcoming?
The above projects and a couple more in their earlier stages, more books, more writing about photography and about other things. I started sharing some essays on my website in January of 2023, and the initial idea was to have four on there - I’ve posted three so far and am in the process of resolving another one. It’s something I’ve found I enjoy, and similarly to the rest of my practice, I have a lot of ideas that I’m working on, in various stages.