This is the image that sums up my son Manus. He’s absolutely in love with doors – obsessed. He had these little yellow suits we put on him because he liked to bum-shuffle around. We call him space man. He’s in his own world and he’s happy. That’s the main ingredient.
I live on a farm in the west of Ireland, on my husband’s family homestead. We’ve always had horses so there’s a couple of little old stables. I’m guessing Manus is about six-and-a-half there; he’s coming up to 10 now, but I could repeat this image today. He still goes to this same spot and wants to play with the door to the washing machine.
It was evident when Manus was born that he had a disability; I identified it very quickly. I spend a lot of long, lonely late nights walking around the yard with him, trying to tire him out to go to bed; our life inside is very fraught. It’s beautiful and amazing but also so bloody hard.
There’s reputed therapeutic value in equestrian therapy for children that have disabilities but it’s not always so. In this case, Manus wants the washing machine door, not the horse. Opening and closing doors are part of his extreme obsessions and rigid routine. That horse is a bright spark. I didn’t have to do anything to get its attention – it seems to be looking at me asking, “What the heck?”
All the stuff in the background just comes and goes: the washing powder, the numnahs, the horse blankets, the pitchfork. I carry my little 35mm camera around and this shot was instinct. I loved 5x4 large format for years and I was always a staunch maker of images that use negatives but with this work I had to use something more practical – so I could dump the camera to save the child, if necessary, from hurting itself – and now I’m shooting on a DSLR with just your bog-standard 50mm lens.
One of the first images I made in this series is of myself pregnant with Manus. I was grieving that I’d never take photos ever again. I already had three children, I thought my career was going down the toilet. But a few years after Manus was born I had to give myself a bit of kick and said, “Lorraine, you have to start taking pictures of your family life.” The kids are good – they don’t tell me to stop. And I don’t spend ages setting up the shot, it’s just a natural flow. In the work, I also talk about how hard it is for the siblings to grow up in a house with a child with a disability. They’re little heroes.
I studied photography in Newport in Wales but I was making photographs long before I went to university. I had a grandad in Connemara who was an image maker. His name was Tommy Tuck and he had a little dark room in his basement. He was a fisher and had a fishing tackle shop but he also made all these images. I loved the mismatch of the two things.
I have an uncle Owen in Connemara and he comes to visit me. He’s in his 50s and has Down’s syndrome. He’s living independently in the city, with help, and he is gender fluid. He and Manus are absolutely in love. They can sit down and look into each other’s eyes for ages and Manus won’t do that with anybody else. They have a knowing.
Inclusion is a word that people are throwing around too handily. Sometimes inclusion can be claustrophobic to someone who needs space to breathe and time to think.
Lorraine Tuck’s CV
Born: Connemara, County Galway, 1978.
Trained: Self-taught in darkroom at home after I borrowed an old enlarger from the Science lab at secondary school. BA Hons in Documentary Photography at University of Wales, Newport, graduating in 2003.
Influences: “Dorothea Lange and the Farm Security Administration – Lange has empathy for those who have less and recognised quickly how photography can be used as a social tool as well as an art form.”
High point: “Being commissioned by Photo Museum Ireland to develop Unusual Gestures. This work has been produced as a touring solo show premiering at Galway international arts festival, and then showing at Photo Museum Ireland (Dublin) and Regional Cultural Centre (Letterkenny).”
Low point: “Having no clear time to make work after having a family.”
Top tip: “Go back again and again.”
• Unusual Gestures is Festival Printworks Gallery from 17-30 July, part of the Galway international arts festival. LorraineTuck.ie
