Send me a lullaby is a love letter to a city undergoing immense change, created during a period of both urban transformation and global upheaval. Emma Phillips was commissioned by Photo Australia to make a photographic portrait of Melbourne in the lead up to PHOTO 2021 International Festival of Photography. The resulting project – published as the first book in the PHOTO Editions series and launching at PHOTO 2021 – is a reflection on connection, navigation and time, and the constantly evolving relationship between people and place.
Phillips’ photographs contemplate urban, domestic and psychological space. Weaving into this series are portraits of people Phillips has come across in Melbourne, capturing a living, breathing city as it responds to the fallout of bushfires and a pandemic. These disparate photographs taken across different seasons construct a dialogue between some of the city’s component parts – homes, shops, parks, streets – with archaeological objects from beneath the city, offering myriad stories to uncover and tell.
Commissioned by Photo Australia for PHOTO 2021. PHOTO Editions is a series co-published by Photo Australia and Perimeter Editions. Send me a lullaby is supported by Hillvale.
Emma Phillips (Sorrento, 1989) is a photographer based in Melbourne, Australia. Her recent work has turned its gaze toward a speculative mode of image making, using image and text to proposition representational discourses, exchanges between subjects’ and their image and the intimate, idiosyncratic nature of photographs. Emma is an occasional writer and teacher on photographic practice, contributing to journals such as The Heavy Collective and teaching at Penumbra Foundation. From 2014–2019 she was the photobook buyer at Perimeter Books, where she implemented the Perimeter Talks program. Emma graduated in 2017 with an MFA from the University of Hartford (US) International Limited-Residency program. Emma is represented by ReadingRoom, Melbourne.
48 pp, section-sewn hardcover
Published by Perimeter Editions, 2021
28 x 20.8 cm
First Edition of 600
