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'Ruby's Room' is a space framed not by walls but by the edge of the photograph and the expansive, imaginative realm of play. An ongoing series, begun in 1998, Ruby's Room is inhabited by a child called Ruby, the daughter of photographer Anne Noble. The photographs in the series, taken by Noble in her double role as mother-photographer, record Ruby's encounters with a variety of objects and substances. Simple things, such as a piece of cellotape, a green wedge of apple or a sticky orange candy are just some of the props that appear in this luridly coloured catalogue of play. As a record of small childhood moments, the photographs form a history that is both connected to, and distant from, the family photo album. The connections lie in the simple delight in bearing witness to the life of one's own child.
Whilst family albums document significant events and achievements, they also record bike rides, bath times and other everyday incidents that, from outside the familial group, seem banal and sometimes without charm. Similarly; Ruby's Room memorialises moments shared by mother and child that might otherwise go unnoticed. Within this mother-child nexus, they hold a private significance that does not easily extend beyond that relationship.
The distance between Ruby's Room and the fading photographs in the typical family album lies in the way the photographs in Noble's project have been framed. Each photograph focuses on Ruby's face, and is cropped tightly; depicting the face only from below the nose to the chin. Consequently; Ruby's mouth, in conjunction with the Jollies, the slime, the lipstick and other objects of play; becomes the focus of the image. In their encounter with Ruby's... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline