The Mothers I Might Have Had

When Caroline Furneaux’s father Colin died suddenly in 2011, she discovered an archive of 35mm slides that he had shot during the 1960s. They were a beguiling series of beautiful women photographed in idyllic locations, mostly in Sweden. It was during this time that he had first met Caroline’s Swedish mother, Barbro, yet most of the photographs were not of her. Who were they all? For Furneaux these girlfriends evoked off-duty film stars from a bygone era. They were everyday goddesses encapsulating the essence of Scandinavian summers and youth: short and intensely sweet. Sleuth-like, Furneaux scoured the photographs for clues to who the women might be and how her father might have met them. She showed them to family members, but they didn’t recognise any of them. As the work progressed, however, she realised that what she was really trying to unlock was the identity of this young man, and the complex father he would become. By some miracle of light and time, these magnificent strangers had connected her with this insouciant version of her father, and given their relationship a new life.

Caroline Furneaux is a photographer and writer based in London. Furneaux is interested in the interplay between words and images and the symbiotic relationship between photography and literature. On its way to becoming a book, images from The Mothers I Might have Had have been shown at FORMAT International Photography Festival and featured in the RPS Journal of Contemporary Photography. This is Furneaux’s first book.