'Our Little Secret' by Louise Axby-Hirst

This body of work was an important achievement in my early photographic education. Although this is not a recent piece of work to me it was an extremely important one. Through this body of work I learnt how to question and visually answer the issues and repercussions of this terrible situation. I wanted to show not physical damage of child abuse, but mainly the emotional abuse that leave deeper, longer lasting scars. Some signs of child abuse are subtler than others, but to me the most lasting scar from child abuse is the loss of that child.
I chose not to depict the obvious, but rather the journey of how a happy carefree child is lost, and the stages that child goes through when been abused. I wanted to show the heart ache, the fear, the fight and finally the submission as that child is finally lost in torture of their situation. The feeling of hurt, fear, dread, but mainly guilt and worthlessness.