Sharday Swanepoel
Paracosm
From as far back as I could remember I had my own TV in my bedroom, equipped with a VCR player and every Disney movie available on video tape. I spent hours clean and alone in my perfect pink bedroom watching my fairy tales, talking animals being my first friends……….like all good princesses.
Fragments of these make believe worlds started to reappear when I became a mother. Memories of mermaids, lost shoes, enchanted beasts and smiling trees.
Like the creatures of childhood fairytales, the images of my children started to morph into these tales and began to take on a life of their own. Photographing my children started to unlock my own inner world, and the memories of the lonely child in her bedroom who now has the children she so longed to play with all those years ago.
As a white, English speaking, South African mother with a very limited extended family, there is little to lean on culturally to help me raise my children other than the stories that live in me. These are my true stories and tall tales.
With this work Sharday was chosen to attend the prestigious 2025
