London Photography Award nominee Colin Gray: 'Some people have gone on to use photography to express their grief.'

Your project The Parents often features exaggerated depictions of your memories and imaginings, do you often work from a mind's eye perspective?

What I'd like to say about this is....My Parents: for me the most important aspect was the collaboration between us, their suggestions were really off the wall, like say when you work with children, their suggestions were sometimes irrational but imaginative. We really had a laugh doing them and it bought us closer together. I feel without doing and exhibiting ‘The Parents’ series I would not have been able to show the deterioration of my mother in ISIH.

Your recent work must have been extremely hard. Did you feel any catharsis from the In Sickness and in Health series, and has the outside world shown a similar response?

Yes the work has been cathartic, initially I started to take the pictures in order to make sense of my mother’s stroke, as ISIH evolved the early pictures of my father were about his shock and not being able to communicate. (like the pictures of him underwater) Taking the pictures helped him talk about his feelings and understand what was happening.

I’ve had many heart rendering stories of people losing their loved ones and how this work has helped them. Some people have gone on to use photography to express their grief. I love art that is useful and helps people.

As someone once said, ‘Great joy and great pain open the gates of the soul’

What would you most like to focus on next?

I’d like to keep my work focused on my children and to have some fun with them. One of my most recent projects, Nina Goes Shopping, is shot ‘from the hip’ without looking through the camera, while my daughter Nina shops. For us it’s like shop lifting, a smash and grab exercise, take the picture and run!