Information and images from the Searching for Juliana Prints
Searching for Juliana was inspired by the story of a seven year old Dutch girl, who was sent to stay with my mother's family in Sweden at the end of the Second World War and had not been heard of since. I began my search for Juliana when I went to Holland for an artist residency in 2008. As a result, over a snowy weekend later that year, Juliana was reunited with my mother and Aunt. When they last met, sixty three years previously, the three were little girls, aged seven, four and two respectively. All three women are now grandmothers with grandchildren older than they were when they last met in Sweden.
This project started as an exploration into the social usefulness of fine art prinmaking - if an image serves a purpose beyond it's immediate aesthetic, does it continue to be art? An initial print was produced in an edition of 200 showing a photograph of the three in 1945, and these were bill posted around the town of Enschede in Holland. This led to media interest - publication of the image and a related article in a regional Dutch newspaper - and the eventual discovery of Juliana who is now seventy years old.
A series of fine art prints were eventually produced in response to the three women's story and the searching process. The textural quality of these images mimics the pixilation characteristic of enlarged digital photgraphs. Each image represents a facet of the searching process: the physical movement through space; the visual search; a sense of separation between searcher and the object of the search. The three prints also represent the landscapes of the three countries - England, Sweden and Holland - in which the women now live.