Created across mexico and australia, the two countries photographer Laura May Grogan calls home, poco a poco is an ode to resilience,
the incredible and terrifying complexity of nature, and a personal journey out of australia’s covid-19 lockdowns in 2020.

For the last 5 years, Laura May Grogan has been in a perpetual state of movement. Working on commercial assignments throughout
mexico, the usa, asia and her native australia. After suddenly finding herself in medical quarantine en route to japan in march 2020, after a hurried exit of out india, away from her adopted home in mexico city, then during an extended (but necessary) lockdown she experienced a jarring 10 month lesson in privilege, humility, adaptability and patience.

poco a poco is some of her most personal work to date.

“In this moment globally when a microscopic virus could evolve so perfectly to remove our ability to use our most vital organs, when we had collectively facilitated incredible acts of cruelty upon each other whilst locally, I was severed from my community and my livelihood and was still healthy and completely overwhelmed by despair.

I needed to create photographs outside of my normal portrait practice to facilitate an emergence from this unsustainable locked down state. To see a world, although forever changed, that was still full of wonder, and of future. Connecting work created in Mexico, with a new series in Australia allowed me to be reminded that this place (mexico) that I love, although not accessible right now, continues to inform me personally and artistically. To be reminded that nature is resilient, beautiful… hopeful”

The cacti documented in poco a poco act as a metaphor for pragmatic optimism.

Complex, nocturnal and unique, the mechanisms that cacti have evolved to survive feel extra-terrestrial. cacti roots are shallow and wide spreading, seeking moisture and passing it amongst themselves in methods as complex as that of newly understood mycorrhizal networks.
Quietly, at night, many varieties of cacti open their stomata to take in carbon dioxide, breathing nocturnally, whilst growing, ever so slowly at a rate as slow as 2cm per year.

Mythologically, It was upon a cactus, that an eagle, eating a serpent, signalled to the aztezs the location of their permanent capital city. This is the cactus that appears on the mexican flag, the plant is intrinsically interwoven in the economical, historical, gastronomical and traditional systems of the country. There are no native cacti in australia and although not always welcome, it is an introduced species that thrives. Seeking to understand what it is to be a stranger in one’s own country both because of her absence from australia and a deeper acceptance of responsibility around being born on unceded aboriginal lands. Simultaneously she lives in the ethics of being a caucasian ‘ex-pat’ in a developing country, the cacti connects to over arching, ever present themes in Laura May Grogan’s work.

“After more than 4 years of living in Mexico City, people still kindly reply to my stuttering apologies for not speaking better spanish with 

“poco a poco” there is a pragmatic, encouraging optimism that comes with this phrase that the english translations of ‘easy does it’ or ‘little by little’ doesn’t convey. I still need a little bit of that optimism now.”