In her ongoing series, Anna Grevenitis depicts the everyday life of her child living with Down syndrome

For Anna Grevenitis, photography enables her to explore concepts of memory, transformation and visibility. It was something that she came to later on in life, with her formative years driven by her studies and teachings of the English language and literature. “But when my daughter was born – and a year later my son – I naturally morphed into a full-time mother and caretaker,” she tells It’s Nice That. “Child-rearing took over and it was so physically and mentally demanding that I only realised when my children turned three or four that I had experienced a profound loss of self in the process; there was a void and photography came to me as the evident instrument to express it.”

Turning a thoughtful lens on herself and her family, Anna looks to document the daily occurrences of those closest to her. When Anna’s daughter Luigia was born, she was told that she had the “physical markers” for Down syndrome – a few years later she received the diagnosis after a simple blood test. 15 years have passed and she’s a thriving teenager, but Anna explains how these “markers” have still remained: “her disability remains visible to the outer world.” Whether it’s grocery shopping, getting ice cream after school or walking to the local library, she often notices the stares, the gawks and side-glancing of fellow passers-by as they go about their daily lives. “Even though their gaze feels invasive,” she adds, “I perceive it as more questioning than judging, at least most of the time.”

These experiences form the basis of her ongoing series, Regard. As a follow-up to Project 9, which she describes as a “daily meditation of [her] daughter’s place in the world”, Regard is its more prepared older sister. This is due to Project 9’s more spontaneous approach and documentary-style, whereas Regard sees every aspect “planned, staged and performed.”

Comprising a series of black-and-white, posed self-portraits of the photographer and her daughter, the heart of the project is that her family is the focus point – “we are the participants,” she adds. And it’s this interest in self-portraiture and the “portrayal of domesticity” that really echoes throughout this series. Anna also cites photographers like LaToya Ruby Frasier and Martha Rosler, writers Jeannette Winterson and Anna Burns, as well as painters Kathe Kollwitz and Paula Modersohn-Becker as her main points of reference within these concepts.

“Photographing family members enables me to gain very close access to my subjects and to have a sincere knowledge of who they are,” she continues on how she came to embark on the project. “But as I am trying to capture the intimacy and vulnerability that can transpire in everyday situations, I am also very aware of my subjects’ personal space and private self.” Within Project 9, this becomes evident as she depicts her daughter Luigia in telling moments – photographed every day until she turned nine. It’s a project that she worked daily on, where the audience presence becomes increasingly more influential.

“Year after year, I have become very much aware of the potentiality for judgement or misunderstanding,” she adds. But it’s this awareness that led her to produce Regard, particularly for its more controlled aesthetic that sees the photographer looking directly into the camera.

“I am opening a window into our reality,” Anna tells us. “The composition of the photographs express routine, domestic acts in which I address the viewers directly: look at us bathing; look at us grooming; here we are at bedtime; this is us on a random day at the beach.” In each perfectly composed image the viewer is thrown into this moment, where they become an outsider looking in on their lives.

An example of such can be seen in 03-04-2019, where Anna is laying in bed eating macarons while her daughter is in the background ironing a shirt. “It’s one of my favourites as it exemplifies the collaboration between my daughter and I that has been growing out of this series,” she tells us, expressing how she places herself centre-stage on purpose. Another image earlier on in the series sees Luigia painting her mother’s toenails, while a more recent picture sees them both applying mascara – the simple tasks and duties of a mother and daughter guiding their way through the usual antics of the world.

“My series is very basic in its concept: it shows a child, it shows a mother, and it shows them living at home, performing familial acts,” she concludes. Believing in the powers that the depiction of domesticity beholds, she hopes that her audience will rethink some of the assumptions about what’s it like for people living with disabilities. “I hope my series finds a humble spot within the movement that helps people with disabilities gain visibility and exposure.”