What is Shielding

This chapter considers a collection of 35mm slides taken by the author's mother, Gerry Neely, a keen photographer, who although wanting to study photography formally, was never able to. The evening class offered at the local university, called ‘Me and My Camera', never had enough enrolments to justify running the class. This chapter will offer an account of the process of digitising the slides and sharing them with family over the last few years. Informed by what Annette Kuhn describes in her book Family Secrets as a kind of ‘memory work', the author's analysis will present a collaborative form of memory work developed from discussions with the author's mom during the pandemic about their individual interpretations and memories of the images contained within the slides, as well as her own thoughts on the process of taking, selecting, and presenting them.