Hidden Lives: the work of care. Gladys Thetford and her daughter Audrey

item details

NameHidden Lives: the work of care. Gladys Thetford and her daughter Audrey

ProductionAnne Noble; photographer; 1992-1994; Wellington

Classificationblack-and-white prints, chromogenic colour prints, black-and-white photographs, works of art

Materialsphotographic paper

Materials Summaryblack and white photograph, chromogenic print

Techniquesblack-and-white photography

DimensionsImage: 906mm (width), 1186mm (height)

Registration NumberO.027961/9

Credit linePurchased 2003

Overview

This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025).

Anne Noble’s ‘Hidden lives: The work of care’ is a set of five photographic essays, each of which documents the life of an ageing intellectually disabled person and the family members who look after them. The series had a political intent: as Noble has said, ‘The work of care is often taken on like a mantle, usually by women —sisters, widows, mothers. Society has always expected it and rarely acknowledged it.’1 Every family is represented by an introductory formal portrait, like the one here, followed by a sequence of images on the everyday happenings in their lives. But, as critic Justin Paton has pointed out, ‘Noble seems less to have taken the families’ portraits than to have helped them make their own collective self-portraits.’2 In this way, the photographer and her subjects worked collaboratively to allow lives that are usually private or hidden to be made public.

1 ‘Images reveal humour and love’, Gisborne Herald, 30 May 1995, unpaginated clipping.

2 Justin Paton, ‘The pitch of attention’, in Justin Paton (ed), Anne Noble: States of grace, exhibition catalogue, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin, and Victoria University Press, Wellington, 2001, p.13.