A Dissonant Past Unmasked: Growing Up with Emily June Smith
Image from “Five Bowls of Cereal” © Emily June Smith. Courtesy of the artist
January 30th, 2025
By Tori Palone @aspiringcyborgartist_
In the eastern most parts of London, Romford-based visual artist and activist, Emily June Smith, takes stoically to her camera. Her work, guided by an underlying desire to heal and to help, is slowly moulding modern photography, simultaneously redefining the bounds of artistry itself, while also emboldening disabled artists to live up to their greatest potentials.
Smithy’s most recent photography capsule, A Dissonant Past Unmasked, highlights facets of her upbringing as someone with both autism and ADHD. The capsule serves as a confrontation of sorts, and through her photographs, Smithy explores her traumatic earlier years as she learns to cope with her identity. Replicating scenes, such as her fathers’ squinted face, a pair of sticky hands, and a cable knitted sweater used as an almost asylum, reveal aspects of Smithy’s childhood that have shaped her into her current self. Forming a beautiful homage to perseverance and the triumph of the encumbered human spirit.
I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Emily, learning about her introduction into the world of visual arts, her use of photography as a therapeutic medium, and her constant crusading for representation and inclusivity in a poorly saturated field.
Images from “A Dissonant Past Unmasked” © Emily June Smith. Courtesy of the artist
Tori Palone: Thanks so much Emily for taking the time to talk with me. I wanted to first of all congratulate you on your recent award, how exciting. What does it feel like to have your work recognized on this scale? Especially with such a deeply personal project?
Emily June Smith: For me, I really wanted to get this project out for educational reasons. I’m not necessarily pushing it out for me to get any recognition, I don’t really mind if people don’t remember who I am. It’s more that I want people to see the project and for it to help people. So for it to be pushed out on this wider scale was kind of my aim, and it’s been really helpful. There’s only so much you can do as one person to try and get people to see it, so I’m really glad that more people are getting to see it.
T: Having representation in a field is something that is so important for younger generations or really anyone struggling with aspects of their own identity. It’s really awesome you strive to be that rock for other people.
Maybe we can start by telling the readers a little bit about you, how you initially got into photography? What drew you to photography as a medium?
E: Yeah, I suppose I don’t have the most exciting start story. I cast myself as a Romford based neurodivergent visual artist, I don’t want to signal myself for just photography and end up doing other things, as well. So a visual artist to me is just anything people can see, or that is in the world. I started the classic way, when I was really little I got a camera. I used to just take photos on this little compact, pink camera. But I never really thought about it as a job, at least not for years.
We did a night once at the Scouts where they taught you to paint with light, and from there I just wanted to be a camera, I thought it was so cool. I got a slightly bigger camera, used to photograph for the Scouts quite a lot, as a voluntary thing. And then from there, one of the Scout leaders mentioned I should do this as a job, I hadn’t realized it was something you could actually get paid for outside of just doing for fun.
Probably around year seven I started to photograph my friends quite a lot. I started off in the fashion and editorial side of it – not the greatest fashion editorial, because I was seven. And then I had my heart set on Falmouth University, somebody else in the Scouts (a lot to deal with the Scouts!) said that they’d been and that it was a really good photography uni. Not only was it so far away from London, which I like because it’s so different, it’s also outdoorsy which I really liked.
Once in uni, I met a great group of people, we then became a collective: the Zinnia Collective. So it’s me and six other artists, and we create exhibitions and workshops. And then from there, people have kind of picked up my work. So it’s a lot of grafting, a lot of shooting for no reason, just because you love it.
Image from “A Dissonant Past Unmasked” © Emily June Smith. Courtesy of the artist
T: That’s really cool to hear about the collective. I have always found that collaborating with people who share mutual interests helps to push my own creativity. Are you still a part of that collective? Do you guys still run exhibitions?
E: Yeah, so we started about two years ago in our second year of uni, and we are still going now. We are actually hoping to expand it in the sense that we are trying to become our own business, so that the logistics of running workshops and getting paid then works out a bit better. So, yeah, we’re definitely still all meeting up and working on loads of stuff together.
T: I wanted to also have you talk a little bit more about your recent project, A Dissonant Past Unmasked. Can you walk us through the inspiration behind this project? What was it like re-capturing, and maybe even in some ways re-living, intimate moments from childhood as an adult?
E: Just a brief overview of the project, it’s basically about growing up with ADHD and autism. There’s this famous, but also not so famous quote, “Once you meet one person with autism, you meet one person with autism.” My project isn’t about me saying this is what it is necessarily like to have these conditions, because everyone is going to experience them so wildly differently. This is just my experience with it.
I think in the art world, as well, there aren’t really projects that are told from the perspective of someone with the condition. There are quite a few projects, like Siân Davey’s work about disabilities with her daughter, but it’s always somebody who doesn’t have the condition telling a story about the condition. So I really wanted to tell the story from my perspective and how it is for me. Just to put that out in the world to also show there’s a different side to it.
I also feel like there’s so much miscommunication about the conditions through social media, that I think it’s important for more people to be able to have a platform for them to talk about how it is for them. Because I know back when I was little, there was nobody big in the world – it was very limited anyway – of people with the condition that I knew about. So it’s very much like when you’re a little kid back in the early 2000s, and you’re told you have this condition, you have no one to look up to, no one to make you feel like it’s going to be okay – you just feel so different to everyone else. So that’s kind of the big reason I wanted to do it, to show that people with these conditions are capable of doing anything. That we’re everywhere.
Weirdly, it came about because of an exhibition I did with the collective about two years ago on ADHD. I spent 21 years of my life without really telling anyone about my condition. Because I grew up in the early 2000s, in Essex, the stigma around it was not great. Most of my life I pretended I didn’t have it so that I wouldn’t get judged. But then I did this project about ADHD, mainly because ADHD has started coming about in social media a lot, everyone seems a bit more accepting of it for some reason, they see it as quirky and fun.
So I did a whole project on how it is not quirky and fun – well, it can be, but in the sense that there are also some really hard bits to it that people just don’t seem to recognise. I got a lot of people being like, “Wow this is really interesting,” or “Wow, I really relate to this,” and I felt I actually have stuff that I can help people with; things to say that other people might relate to. That’s when I decided I was going to be brave enough to just state it, to do a project about it. And hopefully it resonates with or helps someone else. I don’t want them to feel the way I did back when I was little.
And I have super super supportive parents, in the sense that the project wasn’t even hard to start. I came home and was telling my family to do all these weird things, and they just did it. Without even really questioning. It was a lot of conversations with my family, but also a lot of me looking back on things that I hadn’t really looked at before, because I was just kind of pushing it under the rug.
Because I wanted to pretend that it wasn’t there. I went through and read a lot of my old diaries. I also did a lot of research. Since I pretended like I didn’t have the condition, I actually didn’t know a lot about it. So, actually doing the project I started to learn a lot about things I was beating myself up about, I shouldn’t have been beating myself up for. It wasn’t my fault, it was down to having the condition. So it was a good way of I guess healing myself, as well as trying to help other people.
Images from “Five Bowls of Cereal” © Emily June Smith. Courtesy of the artist
T: Can you tell us more about the initial ADHD project you mentioned? How did you initially decide you wanted to explore this through your work?
E: It was a massive turning point within my art itself. Before that, I did very much fashion and editorial stuff, as well as a lot of portraits, and I was kind of really confused about photography back then – I think in part to my conditions – and thought you could really only photograph what you could see in front of you and directly understand. So before this project, I was shooting very differently.
So we had a couple of weeks, about a month or so, before this exhibition, and we were all coming together to talk about our work. We were trying to see where everyone’s work fit, and my work that was created at the time just didn’t fit this group exhibition. Everyone was like – and not in a bad way, this is kind of how art is – “Emily, we need something else from you”.
At the time I was seeing this guy at uni and he also had ADHD. What a lot of people don’t know about ADHD, there is a statistic – I don’t want to say it because I don’t want to make it up – but you’re more likely to become addicted to substances with ADHD than you would if you didn’t have ADHD.
So, I didn’t realise this at the time because we were just uni kids, that he had a really bad drinking problem. I started documenting the life we had in that little point in time – like the Christmas decorations had been left up for years kind of thing, where they haven’t just been put away. Another time he put some burger buns in the oven and forgot about them, so then took them out and recooked them and they kind of totally disintegrated.
I took photos of things like that. Rubbish where there’s a bin next to it, but it’d be put out on the side. I just kind of documented his really messy side. It wasn’t all about “Oh, he’s so fun. Look at him do silly things!”, you don’t realise all of these other parts – he hasn’t cleaned his room, he hasn’t washed up. It was all a part of his condition, it’s not that he’s just lazy. When there was a deadline, he would completely clean that room to the point where it was insane.
So that’s how it really came about. It was called Five Bowls of Cereal because – sometimes, with ADHD, you also get this thing where if you really like something you’ll eat it constantly for ages until you don’t like it – and that’s kind of what he was doing with these bowls of cereal. He sat and ate five bowls of cereal one day, and I thought that just added to the project. But it was so different from what I photographed before, and how I photographed before. It was so much more organic. I kind of changed my whole direction of photography after that, which I am so grateful for.
Images from “Five Bowls of Cereal” © Emily June Smith. Courtesy of the artist
T: I’ve also struggled with ADHD and it’s always oddly comforting talking to others who have it. I feel like everytime I learn something else about myself or something will resonate and I’ll be like, “Oh yeah that isn’t necessarily a normal thing that everyone does, that is just a symptom.” So I love that you document the nuances that people have to deal with on top of the general ideas that the public has.
Back onto your A Dissonant Past Unmasked series, I noticed a lot of your photographs incorporate tactile references – a hand with some sort of gooey coating, somebody’s arm squeezed in tape, a textured cable knit sweater. What is the significance of sensory and perceptual notes in your photography?
E: With this project, it is mainly because a lot of your life is sensory oriented. Like, for me, I need my hands to be dry. If my hands ever feel greasy, I have to constantly wash and wash them. It’s just the feelings of things on your skin, or of clothing. When I was little, I couldn’t wear anything that was tight-fitting, so I kind of dressed like a boy for most of my life. Loud noises, crowded spaces, bright lights. These are all things that every day can be completely overwhelming for people with these conditions. So I did want to kind of highlight all of these sensory things throughout the project, as well.
I read something the other day that autistic people live most of their lives in a state of fight or flight. So sensory things can make or break a day. Because if you’re already anxious, and now you have greasy hands, or your clothings’ too tight, that can really tip someone over the edge.
T: Were there any other intentional elements to the series’ composition you wanted to specifically highlight when shooting?
E: The only people who I actually photograph in the project are me and my family. There’s no one else. There is one with my Nan and Grandad, but you can’t see their faces. I wanted to highlight the impact my condition also had on my family, not just on me. I had quite a rough childhood within my primary school. That didn’t just affect me, that affected my whole family. When things went wrong and I’d argue with my Mom and Dad, then it would also affect my Sister because then she was by herself in her room a lot. The story isn’t just about me and my condition, it’s also about my family as a whole. Because I think a lot of families whose kids get diagnosed, we focus so much on the kid that we forget the impact that it has, mentally, on the mom, and the dad, the brothers and sisters. That’s why they are featured a lot.
This was kind of unintentional, but it’s stayed this way now, the only person who ever looks at the camera is me. There’s only one photo of me in the whole series and I am looking dead at the camera. I think that photo just represents how this is from my perspective, it’s my story. Even though it still has all of my family, at the end of the day, it still only is my interpretation on things. My family is going to see things very differently. So, mainly that all the images feature just my family, I think that’s the really important part for me.
Images from “A Dissonant Past Unmasked” © Emily June Smith. Courtesy of the artist
T: And you said your family was really receptive to helping out with the project?
E: Yeah, yeah. Well, I think for them as well, when I was diagnosed when I was little, it’s very different from how it is now in the sense of you had to have someone come with you to school, come to your house and view you at home. And the school just wasn’t being very helpful, I just don’t think they wanted to put the things in place because it was a lot of effort. Back then there weren’t that many people with the condition in the sense that they weren’t diagnosing people, it was all too much effort. So it was really really hard to get a diagnosis growing up. My parents had to fight for it, and obviously got backlash from a lot of people. So I think, in some way, they were happy to just help me out, but they also like the fact that this is going out to help other people. They knew how hard it was for them, so to help other families would be really nice. They want to help, as well, I think.
T: On your Instagram, I saw that you were involved in an event called “Where are the disabled photographers?” and I admire your eagerness to participate in such talks and continue spreading awareness through your work. I would love to hear your opinion on inclusivity and representation in the photography space.
E: I’m on the fence with it, in the sense that we have really great organisations, for example Autograph. I’m actually currently on an artist development program with them for disabled artists. They are great because they are pushing people we don’t often see in galleries into galleries and are working with these people to push their own art. In terms of actual galleries, it’s hard. I did speak to The Photographer’s Gallery the other day about how many disabled artists they work with and how many of these artists have solo shows, and they couldn’t give me an answer. So I think we have a long way to go in terms of disabled artists having solo shows and being pushed out more.
I think recently, we’ve had a few more people – I don’t know if you’ve heard of Alice Poyzer – she’s also doing a project about autism. I think younger artists are emerging, and I think we are pushing ourselves to be in the world. I just think we still have a long way to go.
I did a whole dissertation on this, which I’ve kind of since blocked out of my head, but it’s not even just disabled artists having their own shows or being in galleries, it’s also just the accessibility that galleries have in general which is still not 100% there. For Free Range, which is a show that you do at the end of graduation year for universities outside of London, I ended up making audio descriptions for each of my images and having those on display, because I wanted to make it more inclusive. If I’m talking about my own disability, how could I then not put things in place to make it accessible for other people? Then, if visually impaired people did come, they could still see my work. Just because they cannot physically see doesn’t mean they can’t appreciate art in their own way.
However, there wasn’t really anything else put in place for other people’s work. Only one other person I saw in that whole exhibition did something to address this, they had braille. And I know that was a student show, but as students I think that inclusivity is something we should be taught. If we are going to put on an exhibition, we have to think about how we can also make that accessible. I know that it’s a lot of work, but once these things are put into place they won’t be a lot of work. Why are we not giving everyone the opportunity to make, and to view, art?
Images from “A Dissonant Past Unmasked” © Emily June Smith. Courtesy of the artist
T: When you were growing up, were there any artists with conditions similar to yours that you looked up to?
E: Big answer, no. I think it’s a mix of people with these conditions not being pushed into the spotlight, and so not seeing them. But I also think that part of it is because I wasn’t looking. I was pretending I didn’t have the conditions, so I wasn’t looking. Though, why would I have to look that hard to find somebody, they should be in the light anyway.
There was one artist I found and his name was Vince Low. He was an artist who drew portraits of actors with dyslexia – I’m also dyslexic – in this really scribbly style. It looked exactly like them, but had this really cool scribbly style around the sides to represent how it is to read words being kind of all over the place, a big mess. He was the only artist I ever actually knew of that had any sort of condition which related to what I had, who was doing stuff I felt like I wanted to do, at least.
Nowadays, there’s more people coming out slowly, which I think is great. But back then, there was literally no one. I think that’s kind of added to the fact that I never really wanted to tell anyone. Because you obviously feel so alone; you grow up thinking “I’m so different”, not in that cool kind of way, but in the sense of like you actually feel there’s something wrong with you. That’s why I think it’s so important that more people come out and say that they have these conditions, it means so much for people growing up with them. Because then they’re seeing that they can just function and do all of these really cool things, which is something I hope that a lot more people find, because I would love for them to not grow up and feel like an alien.
T: It’s like the quote that a condition is a part of you, but it does not define you – I think that’s really important for people to be reminded of. I was wondering whether you had upcoming projects you are working on which we can highlight for our viewers to keep an eye out for?
E: So, this project is ongoing currently. It’s not finished, I’ve still got a lot of work to do on it. But I’m working on creating a book with this boy called Murray Bruce. He’s a nonverbal, autistic boy, who I saw one day on TV with my mom on some program by Chris Packham called Inside Our Autistic Minds. He’s nonverbal, but writes these really beautiful pieces about how he wishes he could be heard. And honestly, when we were watching it, it brought me and my mom to tears. I think people assume if you’re nonverbal that you have nothing going on, when he is so smart and has so much to say, he just can’t verbally communicate it. But he can write these really lovely pieces about it.
It was a whole process of trying to get him on board to create a book. I eventually found his dad, the radio presenter Ken Bruce’s, work email and emailed him that even if he doesn’t want to work with me, I just want to say this to Murray. And I basically was just like I think what you’re doing is amazing, I really love your work. I didn’t hear anything for months, and then his mom months down the line was like, “he saw your email and he would love to work with you”.
Basically, it’s going to be the work I’m doing, and his pieces of writing together, to highlight the fact of how different autism is in everyone, to the point where obviously I verbally communicate, but he cannot verbally communicate. But then he’s going to tell his story and his experience with the condition in the best way he communicates, which is writing. And I’ll tell my story in the best way I communicate, which is through imagery. And together we’re going to create this book about the condition. It’s a piece of art, but it also educates. Hopefully it will help some people with the condition. Although it’s in the works, it’s going to be pretty long, two years or so, but he’s slowly writing pieces and I’m slowly creating more work.
Image from “A Dissonant Past Unmasked” © Emily June Smith. Courtesy of the artist
Artist Statement: Emily June Smith
'‘Remember you weren't the one who made you ashamed, but you are the one who can make you proud" ~Laura Hershey
At primary school, a teacher told me I would end up in prison. I struggled more at home. Diagnosed since childhood with ADHD and Autism, my shouting and hitting were moments no-one looked forward to. Stigmatised by the community, and isolated without adequate training, my family and I had to learn to cope. For me, I morphed myself to fit in, by hiding behind imaginary masks. A Dissonant Past Unmasked is a photographic project positioning my family and myself inside re-enactments of our lives. Private sufferings from the past are performed against the backdrop of suburban domesticity. Traversing bygone ruptures, my autobiographical approach is an attempt to acknowledge my history. By confronting my difficult past, I am looking for catharsis and closure within quiet scenes of dissonance.
The complexities of disability are circumvented by society, as they seemingly misalign with standardised social norms. This has left us with no voice nor visibility, whilst our stories are often told by someone else. I shine a light on my challenges, in the hope of encouraging others to take back control of their lives. In doing so, I seek to alter the way disability has been side-stepped by bringing visibility where there had been none.