My Family of 18 (top) and a sequence of enabling photos below and text (enlarge by clicking on them)

Below is a sequence of photos and text which show the handmaking of a type of book I have simply called the "Lifebook" . A lifebook is a vehicle for making some kind of relational and sense map for those who need it because of issues of family displacement and of childood seperation . Although I do not see why the lifebook idea cannot extend to others who have lives they want to record and navigate for reasons of discovery and sense ..

As someone who came through seperations from my original family who then later curiously kept me displaced in an outer part of the family , it was nevertheless extra nonsensical very painful and needed navigation later in my life because of its emotional effects . Over 30 years I made a journey of sense from 1984 and later created some african masks made from the wood of the Mental Hospital where as a teenager in the 1970's I had broken down . Those masks can be seen at "The Highcroft Lifebook Project and African masks" its another blog ...

I made the masks because I discovered the family I was born into had many patterns of seperation and abandonment of children which had ended up in the Erdington Workhouse which astonishingly was later to become the Mental Hospital I went to broken .. Over 100 years 18 family members had association to this one place under different names - either as the Workhouse or later as the Mental Hospital . The thread which joined us was childhood seperations and unstable marriages .....

Mozilla Firefox is the best browser I have found to view the photos but you can also go to Flickr.com to see them : HERE