“Colour photographs of my mother’s tidy cupboards together with excerpts from my father’s rantings. An unexpectedly wicked narrative exploring a claustrophobic relationship, designed as a miniature bookwork”.

‘My Mother’s Cupboards & My Father’s Words’ is a miniature book. You have to get close to be able to read the text and to register the details in the photographs. It was created in 2000, for the Shoreditch Biennale, at a time when Anna Fox was inspired to make work ‘close to home’, challenging the notion of the documentary photographer as outsider.

The book pairs words by her father – gruesome outbursts by a man with a rapidly debilitating disease towards the women in the house – with claustrophobic images of her mother’s neatly organised cupboards. The result is one of Fox’s most powerful and intimate bodies of work.

The original self-published edition of the book has long been out of print. This second ‘remastered’ edition includes minor adjustments but remains faithful to the original design and has been produced in close collaboration with the artist. It is published to coincide with a renewed interest in the work (evidenced by exhibitions at SeMA, Seoul and it’s inclusion in the Barbican exhibition ‘Masculinities’ which has toured to Gropius Bau, Berlin and FOMU, Antwerp) and comes at a time when the realities of living closely with family members are in sharp focus.

Original published by Shoreditch Biennale 2000 ISBN: 0-953319-93-8.

Second Edition by Here Press 2024 ISBN: 978–1–9993494–4–8