Merciline: A Life in Full
2022 - 2025
Merciline: A Life in Full is an intimate photographic chronicle of one woman’s extraordinary ordinary life—Merciline “Mama” Melbourne of Buff Bay, Portland, Jamaica. Spanning 2022 through her funeral in 2025 after passing at 92, this documentation by her grandson, whose return to the family home became both a personal excavation and an act of archival preservation. What began as interviews to capture Mama’s memories evolved into a visual testament to a woman who shaped generations through resilience, discipline, and unwavering self-reliance.
Born in 1932 and raised without access to education or parental support, Mama entered domestic service as a child and eventually became the caretaker of the Buff Bay Resident Magistrate's Courthouse. She independently raised six children in a one-room home with no bathroom or electricity, guided not by aspiration for self-advancement, but by a singular dream—that her children surpass the limitations life had placed on her.
This body of work presents her with dignity, complexity, and unembellished truth: her sharp wit, her unflinching independence, and the pride with which she carried her life’s labor. Through photographs, personal recollections, and family testimony, this project positions Mama not simply as a subject but as a matriarch, storyteller, and an emblem of Caribbean womanhood whose legacy endures beyond the frame.
“I grew up well. I know how to cook, wash, clean the house, and shine a floor so well you could comb your hair in its reflection. I never wanted to work in the market or on the farm. Domestic work was what I loved, and people respected me for it. Police officers and firefighters were some of the people I worked for.
I bought what I needed, and I've never been into material things. I don’t envy anybody for what they have. Whatever I didn’t have, I learned to live without. And I’m not into gossip either. I don’t want anybody stressing me out with lies, so I keep far from people who talk too much.
I grew up with good manners, and I carried that with me all my life. Money is necessary, yes—but manners and respect will take you further. Simple things, like helping an old lady cross the street… those are the things that help you go through life.”
Merciline “Mama” Melbourne
Feb. 23, 1932 - Dec. 20, 2024