Martina Mullaney was born in Ireland in 1972. She lives and works in London.
She has a series of work made in 2005. It is of large scale photographs of slept in beds of homeless people in England and Wales. It is interesting how she has approached a common and sensitive subject in a unique way. It is intriguing and emotional as you can see the dirty and worn mattresses and begin to wonder the stories of the people that sleep there.
The images are all very similar. The mattress fills about a third of the frame and the rest is of a wall. Because of how minimal they are, the viewers attention is directly to the smaller details, such as the unclean sheets and marked walls.
Although the style of Mullaney’s work isn’t what I am planning in my shoots, it is how he has shown context just through someones space that has inspired me. Although the images are simple, you are able to compare each one. For example one looks somewhat comfortable with pillows and a bedsheet, whereas one is just a stained mattress against a marked wall. Without even showing the person, Mullaney is allowing the viewer to feel sympathy towards a group of people.
Lucy Davis 