The Parents
Colin Gray

Colin Gray began to take photographs of his parents in the 1960s when he was 5 years old. At family occasions, holidays and celebrations Gray would be allowed one shot from the single roll of film in an old square box brownie.

Over the next three decades his series of photographs has accumulated into an extensive body of work documenting his parents loving, working, homemaking and playing.

'The Parents', begun in 1980, is a series of photographs about Colin's relationship with his parents and theirs with each other. Many of the images involve enactments of memory and fantasy woven around events from the past, domestic realities, observations of daily rituals and the advancement of old age.

Colin's parents Ron and Rene are depicted as impish co-conspirators in narrative images that are drawn from collective memories or based on absurd and wonderful fantasies.