"Sheppey itself, cut-off from mainland Kent, faces challenges of hardship, with Sheppey East ward being recently deemed in the top 1.5 per cent most deprived areas in the country,"
"A stark reality for the communities of these seaside towns, I felt it important to capture the immediate locations surrounding the house during that decade, as a record of culture and society in a broader sense."
"I wanted the book to feel like an object that could exist within the era and style of the house,"
"I always envisioned it being orange or green like the curtains my nan had made - we found the exact shade in a Windsor cloth to cover the book. On the cover there is a small tip-in photo of a wall that we used as a goal to play football as kids. The back of the book in gold foil holds the title: Close to Home."
Laura repeatedly visited Sheppey to document daily routines, decaying wallpapers, unchanged streets and cyclical natural phenomena. Photographs capture returning sea foam and childhood places that have since disappeared or declined under modernisation. Local hardship is acute: Sheppey East ward ranks among the most deprived areas nationally, prompting attention to immediate locations around her grandparents' house as cultural and social records. The project required nine months of darkroom editing, with fragile images and a demanding curatorial process. Sequencing followed her grandparents' chronology. Design choices—Windsor cloth cover, a tip-in photo and gold-foil title—evoke the house's era while confronting mortality and honouring family love.
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