Using the heterotopic mirror to reveal tensions in public reaction to a photographic essay of eldercare staff and older adults.

This paper analyses a photographic essay of older adults and workers in a nursing home environment, as a day-in-the-life documentary photographic essay Who cares published in Kai Tiaki, Nursing New Zealand in 2006. We discuss the essay, which intended to make eldercare work more visible and valued. The purpose of this paper is to ask, 'Why were these photographs so uncomfortable to view, and why did they elicit such strong polysemous reactions from viewers?' We argue that in order to address this question, sites of eldercare may be understood as heterotopias, or places of exclusion from social norms. While the photographs were meant to make it possible for viewers to look into the daily reality of eldercare work, we suggest the visual essay instead acted as a heterotopic hall of mirrors, revealing tensions that obscured the labour value to viewers. As observers looked into the mirror of their own lives, the utopian discourse of a residential care 'home' was disrupted, as the idealised version of eldercare work we have become attuned to in the media was punctured by the powerful heterotopia of the photographic essay. This article illustrates the way in which eldercare work is made invisible through complex social processes involving sight and site related to contemporary visual and spatial practices of aging and eldercare.