Scarred for life is a series produced in two parts, Scarred for life I containing nine images and Scarred for life II containing ten images. The series represents moments of transition between childhood naiveté and mature states of self-awareness as a social subject. Each individual work betrays the persistence of childhood and adolescent trauma lodged within adult memory. Moffatt used photolithography (which was the most common form of printing used in newspapers and magazines in the 19th and 20th centuries) to print the works in faded colours, adding to their ephemeral effect.
Each individual work within the Scarred for life series has captions in the border of the image. The captions don’t explain the images, in Scissor Cut for example, the caption is “For punishment, the Kwong sisters were forced to cut their lawn with scissors.” It does not explain what they are being punished for. The captions tend to add a mysterious nature to the image and make the audience wonder. This works directly against the received notion of photographic captioning as necessarily directing understanding. The captions of the images bring the attention back to the title of the series, that the subjects, he, or she, in the image, are being “scarred for life”. In Scarred for life the complex webs of thought, action, word and image capturing the chasm of ongoing trauma are presented. Moffatt has said that this series may be a continuing project as ‘everyone has a tragic tale to tell’.
Scissor Cut is an individual work from the Scarred for life II. It was printed on an 80.0 x 60.0cm sheet. It is the only work in Scarred for life II which is shot from above – the point of view of the parent. Scissor Cut, is a photograph of two young girls “the Kwong sisters” being punished. They were forced to cut their front lawn with scissors. The photograph does not tell us what the little Kwong sisters did in order to have to cut the lawn with scissors. The nature of the punishment seems to outweigh the seriousness of whatever the crime the young girls might have committed.
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