The Birthday Party is a collection of children’s portraits. Speers has stripped away the stereotypes of childhood in a far cry from the usual idealisation of the ‘happiest days of our lives’. She reveals the cruelty, vulnerability and duplicity of children. She captures children happy to play with imperfection and embrace the grotesque; children with a sense of danger and disregard for the social expectations of a birthday party smile.
The resulting visuals are unsettling, with a transparency that is neither black and white nor colour, and the humanity neither that of an adult nor of a child.
