Article on ASCA's Forget-me-knot Day Competition
by the winner, Claire Crennan
The following article is written Claire Crennan just prior to flying off to New York with a friend, her prize for winner our inaugural Forget-me-knot day photographic competition, last November.
Claire Crennan
My name is Claire Crennan. I am a 21 year old student and the proud winner of ASCA’s ‘Untangle the Knot Competition’. I am also very proud to say that I am also the photographer behind the “Putting Lives Back Together Again” photograph which was named second runner up in the competition. I currently study creative advertising at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst and I have a passion for creative design and photography.
Winning Entry
"No longer living in a shadow"
by Claire Crennan
My vision in entering the competition was to capture the essence of life and how easily it is broken by the impact of child abuse. I also wanted to do something that would symbolise the veil behind which survivors often hide. It was these two factors that were the basis and inspiration for my pictures. The bow in each of the images represents the untangling of the knot of child abuse; it is no longer tangled but rather a symbol of hope.
A shadow, as simple as this seems, carries great symbolism. They are the one thing we carry with us day-to-day, their degree of darkness changes and it is often said that people can hide in their shadows. Hiding from child abuse is one thing ASCA encourages survivors not to do but rather encourage them to come out of their shadow. I decided to capture the picture of a person’s shadow and tie the ribbon around their wrist; this symbolizes ASCA helping pull survivors out of the darkness of their shadow.
Second runner-up
"Put back together the lives
of nearly 1 in 12 Australians"
by Claire Crennan
What better symbol of life than an egg, it is the origin from which all living things come from; they are fragile and they need to be nurtured. They are easily broken, just like the lives of sufferers of child abuse. Broken things can indeed be put back together, just like ASCA does for adult survivors. In order to capture the fragility of life and the way in which ASCA helps put back together broken lives, I decided to crack an egg and tie it back together with the ASCA blue ribbon. The lone broken egg sits in a carton of many other unbroken eggs; this is symbolic of the 2 million Australian adult survivors of child abuse.
Thank you very much to ASCA for this fantastic opportunity, I am very much looking forward to my trip to New York and encourage everyone to get involved in untangling the knot of child abuse.
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