The big picture: Laura McCluskey’s relaxed relatives

It’s hard to imagine a sunnier vision of one’s grandparents in their advanced years than this photograph, taken in 2019 by Laura McCluskey. It was the morning after her grandmother’s 90th birthday party, a lively affair by all accounts. McCluskey went round for a cup of tea and found her grandparents upstairs in bed, perusing the papers in the reflected glow of sunshine on copper wallpaper. Well used to their granddaughter taking photos of them, the couple lay back on their floral pillows, rested their hands on the covers and smiled.

The image appears midway through McCluskey’s new book Close to Home, which gathers a decade of photographs from the Isle of Sheppey, off the north Kent coast, where she grew up. Some of them depict places that McCluskey frequented as a child. We see beaches whipped with sea foam, empty fish and chip shops, cars overgrown with ivy. But the heart of it is McCluskey’s grandparents’ home in Sheerness. There were tensions in her family growing up, which made it difficult for her to return as an adult, but the little house at 13 Acorn Street was a shelter from the storm.

It was also a creative place, with Jean and Pat’s eccentricities on full display. They loved a bit of glitz and went to Las Vegas several times for their holidays. “It’s only from leaving and going back that I saw [the decor] in a new light,” says McCluskey. “It was my nan’s style and influence. A lot of the bedspreads and curtains were made from faux fur and handmade, and this copper bubble wallpaper was everywhere.”

In the book, which covers a 10-year period from 2014, we witness her grandparents becoming more elderly and infirm. Pat died first in 2021; Jean followed in 2023. McCluskey describes the project as “a reconnection with my family and at the same time a letting go, saying goodbye to them and to the house itself, which has been the centre point of our family”. By the end, 13 Acorn Street has been emptied out, with few traces of its former occupants left. In the bedroom, against all that copper wallpaper, a white rectangle marks where the bedhead once stood. 

Close to Home by Laura McCluskey is published by Guest Editions