Australian Life 2024: Aletheia Casey’s finalist image

When photographic artist Aletheia Casey made this image of her mother, she didn’t realise how special it would turn out to be.

Marg and Adelchi. Picture: Aletheia Casey

Aletheia Casey spent a decade pursuing an ­artistic goal: a perfect picture of her mum, Marg. “I wanted to make one truly great portrait of her,” she explains. “A definitive portrait that spoke of our bond.” Marg was the most influential ­person in her life: her guiding light, her teacher, the person who understood her best. Last August, aged 79, she passed away from cancer. This image from the Australian Life exhibition shows her with Casey’s son Adelchi four months before she died. It’s one of the last images Casey ever made of her.

Marg had a tough start in life: she was a toddler when her mother died, and lost her father at 16. She became a Catholic nun, and taught in schools in her twenties before meeting a priest named Paul. They fell in love, and quit the Church in order to marry. Marg and Paul raised three kids in Wagga Wagga, and home-schooled them. It was the best childhood, says Casey, who’s had a 20-year career as a visual (broadcast) journalist in Australia and the UK while also ­pursuing her art practice in analogue photography (she uses a large ­format camera – the type that requires her to wear a cloth over her head, and offers only four frames per session. It’s an exercise in slow, meditative image-making, she explains.)

This image was made in her parents’ garden in Callala Bay, NSW, during one of her twice-yearly visits from her base in London. “We knew Mum’s illness was progressing, though we didn’t realise how little time we had left,” Casey says. Marg had been gardening with her young grandson, and sat down for a rest; he came and curled up in her lap, a picture of love. “Hold it right there!” Casey implored them as she raced into the house to grab her camera gear.

She wasn’t ready to process the film until six months after Marg’s passing. And when she finally did, there was a shock: moisture had got into the roll during storage and damaged the film, overlaying the images with speckles and a luminous haze. “I was really upset,” says Casey, 44. But in time, she’s come to view it differently: those imperfections are beautiful in their own way, and loaded with meaning. She hears Marg’s voice when she looks at this image now: a voice that ­gently ­reminds her, When you seek perfection life will always throw something different at you. Nothing is ever perfect. So lighten up, and roll with the punches. “It was another life ­lesson from mum,” Casey says. “The last she ever gave me.”