Lisa Jayne Cramer

Bonded by love and catastrophe.

As an Australian photographer my current and ongoing project is a very silent and personal journey into grief/loss for a child that never happened, expressing how grief makes demands on us, and proposing dense ideas about a reformulated family structure.

The narrative of my work, at times cryptic yet rich with intention, is to create a dense atmosphere of complex feelings and reactions, aiming for the work to be challenging, to make the viewer slightly uncomfortable, pushing them to question losses and desires that hum just below the surface of their waking life. Highlighting the deep-rooted longing, yearning to become parents that, through no fault of our own, was denied and bringing to light our story, our feelings of being outliers in a world focused on family.

All the occasions, the Mother's Day's, the Father's Days, every family celebration, every child, every grandchild, everyone is felt and experienced differently through our eyes. Reaching out to tell our story brings psychological relief, collective strength and voice to the question, ‘If not a mother or a father, then who are we?’