In the summer of 2011, thanks to a grant from Canada Council for the Arts, I spent four months driving from British Columbia to Newfoundland for what became my Oh Canada! project. Having moved from my native Toronto to New York in my mid-20s, I’d spent 14 years in the US, travelling more widely there than I ever had in the country of my birth. So this adventure was an opportunity to discover and photograph Canadians outside the big cities.
My dad tagged along for some of the trip, and I was joined by my mum for a couple of weeks. Neither of us had ever been to Alberta before. We went to a Star Trek festival, visited museums populated by stuffed gophers and creepy dolls, and explored a replica pioneer village. This picture was taken at the Fantasy Land hotel in West Edmonton Mall. People who grew up in Edmonton told me they would rent rooms there for birthday parties or prom nights. There were a lot of themed rooms, including one with an igloo-shaped bed. As soon as I saw that, I knew we had to book it.
I remember a time when people – especially Americans – would say, “Oh, do you live in an igloo?” when I told them I was Canadian. And the hotel had really gone with the theme. As well as the bed with its faux fur cover, there is the icy landscape with huskies painted on the wall, and a snowflake pattern on the carpet. You can just see the mirror on the ceiling, though the jacuzzi isn’t visible.
There was also a pull-out couch and a pair of bunk beds but Mum and I had shared a bed many times over the years and we both slept in the igloo. The photograph was my idea and, although my parents always hated having their pictures taken, Mum went along with it. She was a beautiful woman but that was rarely reflected in photographs. She’d always end up looking weirdly asymmetrical and would say: “What’s wrong with my face?” We used to jokingly call her Picasso.
Most of my work is environmental portraiture: I generally photograph people where I find them. There’s a degree of collaboration. I don’t like to tell participants what to do, but they tend to end up engaging in a sort of dance with me while I get the image balanced right. I’ve learned to nail shots fast but I’m a little less comfortable when it comes to self-portraits or family members, and this one took several attempts. That’s mainly because the camera had a fixed timer – it was on a tripod and I only had 10 seconds to dash to the bed, jump in and compose myself. I was also having to leap over my mum and get the sheets flattened. She had it relatively easy: all she had to do was keep looking straight ahead and not blink at the crucial moment. Things have moved on a lot in the intervening years and young’uns don’t know how tricky it used to be. Now I could take that picture from the bed, using an app.
I guess my mum had bought that nightgown for the trip. I think it must have been fairly new because my parents rarely bought clothes and that’s the nightgown she died in late last year, two years after my dad passed away. There are very few pictures of me and my parents together. I sometimes tried to make more in the final few years, while I was their primary caregiver, but Dad would often question my motives and, besides, I had so little energy. I’m glad I have this one, though. It’s my favourite photograph of me and Mum, partly because it’s symbolic of our relationship. She was my best friend, and I think you can see here how close we were. Where some people end up wanting to set their parents adrift, my instinct was to be right there with her, on the ice floe.
• Haddon Hall by Naomi Harris is published by Void. See more at @mapledipped
Naomi Harris’s CV
Born: Toronto, Canada, 1973
Trained: “School of Hard Knocks (and International Center of Photography)”
Influences: “Jewish borscht belt humour; Mel Brooks; Second City TV; old movies, especially film noir; fuzzy childhood memories”
High point: “Homemade plum schnapps with 101-year-old Dr Albert Hoffman [the inventor of LSD] at his home in Basel, Switzerland.”
Low point: “Many, but waking up the day after a shoot for my first book, America Swings, and finding an old used condom on the bed (and not used by me).”
Top tip: “Never stop researching, experimenting, learning and listening to others. Try new things: take a pottery class, learn pickleball, things that make you a more well-rounded person and interesting at a dinner party. Oh, and take good care of your body – photography is extremely physical so don’t ignore those little aches and pains, and stretch”
