Megan Bendall is a 20 year old documentary photographer from Newcastle currently based in Cheltenham.
Megan is a thoughtful image maker tackling difficult subjects such as living with cancer in a sensitive and considered way. Megan lost her own Mum to cancer and documented her Mum’s life and illness in a moving project called ‘Oh, Mama’. Many would be deterred by this experience but Megan has turned her camera to other people experiencing cancer in a project titled ‘Coping with Cancer’.
Megan is currently in her third year of a photographic degree and her work has been featured in Fable & Folk, The Hexham Courant and Amateur Photographer. She was nominated for the RPS 100 Heroines project and her Instagram takeover was very well received.
Her approach to her projects is fearless and like many fantastic photographers her work ethic commendable.
How did you discover your love of Photography?
I suppose my love for photography came from family documentation. I always had such a love for the prints of family photos we kept in crates in the loft and whenever I could I'd collect my favourites to stick up around my room; photos from family holidays, ones my Da took before I was born of my Ma, photos of me and my brother at Halloween, birthday parties, holidays and more— my parents documented it and I’m currently digitising it all.
My love for taking photos began in 2014, I was 16. My family bought their first DSLR just before a trip to Calgary, Alberta where a lot of my uncles, aunts and cousins live and I never put down the camera. My brother and I experimented, playing with slow motion video, how shutter speeds worked, all of it.
I started studying an A-Level in Photography and I’m now in my 3rd year at the University of Gloucestershire studying a BA Hons in ‘Photography: Editorial and Advertising’. I’ve discovered the extent of documentary photography, what kind of impact it has and how it can be used to make a difference and spread experiences and knowledge on topics that have either been seen as a taboo or not widely talked about.
Do you use different cameras for different projects and if so why?
I use a mix of full frame Canon DSLRs for most projects. Most often it is what is available from the University for borrowing or what I own, or even sometimes just experimenting with what is available.
I always work with natural light and it isn't always available, especially if I'm restricted for time, so higher end DSLRs really help with reducing noise and keeping images sharp when working with high ISOs.
When I’m not creating ‘formal’ work (usually posed portraits and needing a certain outcome for my images), or going on small trips with friends and family, I shoot 35mm and a lot of the photos that didn’t make it into ‘Oh, Mama’ were shot on various rolls of cheap 10+ years expired film that I bought from Tynemouth Market in Newcastle, shot on a Canon AE-1 that I got for £10. I’ve experimented with medium format quite a lot, borrowing cameras from university, friends and family and taking portraits of whoever is willing. Some of my favourites were a few years ago on my cousin’s Rolleiflex.
Film is too expensive to be sustainable when shooting large-bodied projects that have time restraints, therefore digital is my go-to and I know I can get the results I want and need on digital to keep my work consistent. But when I have a chance to shoot film cheaply, it's more about quick snaps and capturing memories that I think would be more nostalgic on film than digital - it's often lighter to haul around too.
You are not afraid to confront difficult issues - for example documenting your Mum's cancer illness with your project 'Oh, Mama' and subsequently 'Coping with Cancer'. How do you manage to be sensitive to the situation while portraying the truth of the situation?
I think difficult issues are often dealt with by confronting and photographing the situation. It’s almost a therapy in some ways and allows you to understand a situation a little bit better but also at a distance, to take a step back and breathe.
With 'Oh, Mama', the truth of the situation was just our everyday life. Ma was diagnosed for the second time in the April of 2017 and as a family, I don't believe we dwelled on the use of the word ‘terminal' because life continued as it was before; the only difference was that Ma was going through treatment and physically changing, not personally or emotionally. It meant I got to spend even more time with her, and for that I’m grateful.
I made sure to get consent to photograph her, asked her if she was okay with me creating a body of work with her and our agreement was no images within hospitals, no images of treatment, just photographs of what we would cherish later, something that showed what we were going through and how support got us through it.
My photography became a vessel for telling Ma’s story. I photographed what I knew and what I knew would bring joy to her (buying her flowers, portraits of her closest friends and family, trips out for dinner); home and family. Truth came easy for 'Oh, Mama' because it was honest. It showed our relatively normal everyday life, our reality and our cup-half-full, sunny disposition never faded.
With 'Coping with Cancer', it was a similar situation, I had created a body of work that was my way of coping with cancer and my progression was seeing other people's form of coping, both people living with cancer and their companions. It gave me a platform to learn about different forms of cancer, not just breast cancer and to understand the pros and cons of different treatments, medical help and psychological help, all without putting my own bias on it. Alongside that, it allowed the people I photographed to tell their truths, how they’ve coped and their experiences with cancer, to get it out on paper. There wasn’t a medicinal gaze that humanised the illness— it was real life experiences from people rather than from their illness and I think that is often something that is hard to break out of and although it is honest of the illness, it isn’t always honest of the person. It's hard to show a story from the side of empathy rather than sympathy and there is such a need to build projects off of personal understanding rather than just acknowledging a person's experiences.
How do you find the Photography community? Have they been welcoming of you and your projects?
I adore the Photography community no end; photographers that I aspired to be like are people who are helping me and it's kind of surreal in some ways. I've got to know so many people from different areas; publishing, documentary and more and I'm slowly meeting them all at photographic events and festivals, putting faces to names.
The response to 'Oh, Mama', especially after Ma passed, really made me feel at home within the community because not only have they been emotionally supportive and wanting the best for me but they've been so unbelievably helpful in constructively pushing my work in the right direction and giving advice on careers, images, opportunities and more.
When I begin new projects; like I did with 'Coping with Cancer', they’ve been phenomenal at sharing via Twitter and Instagram to help me find collaborators or responding and giving me new photographers to research to inform my work. Their help and sharing led me to opportunities such as photographing Tim Andrews in Brighton and being featured in Amateur Photographer Magazine.
Are there are other women working in Photography you admire?
Within Photography currently there are so many incredible women. I’m surrounded by people my age creating incredible work, especially from past and present students from my University with work in the music industry like graduate Ellie Ramsden and her recent book ‘Too Many Man’, or online platforms for storytelling like Fable and Folk from Charlotte Cooper.
However, my primary influences who have influenced my work, are women like Jo Spence and Shahrzad Darafsheh: both have documented cancer.
Darafsheh is a photographer from Tehran who documented the fragility of her emotional and physical being whilst living with cancer and Jo is largely known for fighting the medicinal gaze within cancer, removing the use of lexis like ‘victim’ or ‘subject’ and fighting the injustices of the working class and speaking out about their lack of accessibility to healthcare.
Also the work of Liz Orton, who writes academically about the medicinal gaze and how photography is used within medicine, whether or not it is invasive and how medical imaging almost details a power imbalance between doctors and patients as well as dehumanising the patient through the imagery.
Furthermore, there’s Ella Murtha, keeping her mother’s work alive and telling the story of working class people in England throughout the 70s and 80s. Alongside Ella, Joanne Coates is working on incredible initiatives for women and education within photography as well as creating her own work.
Abbie Trayler-Smith, Margaret Mitchell— who just featured on UNoPhoto’s Podcast for her familial documentary work following her sister’s children, after her death and 20 years after her original documentation ‘Family’, Amy Romer, Jocelyn Lee, Lauren Foster, Isadora Kosofsky, Mhairi Bell-Moodie, Ella Cousins and so many more.
People are recognising the depth of your work - was it good to be recognised for the RPS Heroines project?
It was so cool to be a part of such a large movement. The scale at which it took off was very impressive and it put light to so many well deserved female photographers. I was very grateful and enjoyed showcasing my work on their Instagram; with thanks to Ellie Ramsden who put me forward for it. It meant that I got to talk and interact with other women who had been featured, with similar emotive, empathy-based stories and projects. I was happy that people could relate to my work on some form of personal level— whether they had been through cancer or know someone who has been through it, found a sort of solace through it or simply saw their family in mine. So many documentary cancer projects are negative and show the brutal reality of treatment and death; not many focus on the positives, how support, family and friends can be life-changing, even if the illness is terminal and the platform of RPS Heroines gave me the chance to show that to a larger audience.