Behind the Portrait - Shaun Murawski
As told to Jack Howse | Photo by Simon Murphy
Shaun Murawski is a poet and photographer who grew up in Govan and the East End. He has lived in Govanhill for the past ten years. After begrudgingly applying to do a photography course at the behest of his mum, Shaun experienced a stratospheric rise to fame after winning a competition to photograph the Queen in 2011; becoming the youngest ever person to take an official portrait of her.
I grew up next to Wine Alley in Govan, or what used to be that. I never really came to Govanhill as a kid but I had a couple of friends from around here.
I didn’t really have a set idea of what I wanted to do. My mum kinda made me apply for college by saying I either needed to go get a job or study something else after I’d decided I wanted to turn down a place I’d been offered at university doing a science course. And then from there that's where my passion developed from. It feels strange that I kinda fell into this thing that now I think was made for me.
After college, I was selected for a commission for the Scottish Parliament. I was quite lucky and thankful to have got this because at the time I was gutted that I had been rejected for art school after college. The commission was to take a formal portrait of the Queen.
You’d think it would be strange photographing the Queen as someone who’s really left wing and anti-monarchist, but it wasn’t. I was so young when I did it and in some ways that made it easier with my political leanings, because I had no idea what I was doing. However I was allowed to do it the way I wanted which was so important.
It was made out to be quite a big deal being the youngest person to photograph her. It was in all the papers. But they seemed less interested in my age and more so that I had lots of piercings and looked a bit like a mosher.
My mum died quite unexpectedly during COVID. It was at this time that I started to write again for the first time since school. I think mostly because I couldn’t partake in this communal act of grieving due to the lockdown, and because I couldn’t go outside to take photos which is my usual way of communicating and interacting with the environment. I made these zines with my photos and my words and I got lots of messages from people saying how much the poetry resonated with them.
It’s only very recently I’ve been able to say I’m a poet without getting serious working class guilt about it. I guess it’s an interesting one and is probably related to the fact that if you come from a background like mine, being an artist is never presented to you as a feasible career – not because it’s looked down upon, but more out of practicality. This, and a hundred other reasons I guess. Sometimes I can feel guilty that I have experienced some sort of class mobility when I know people working just as hard as me who aren’t in a great situation. I don’t know how useful guilt is as an emotion though.
This picture of me was taken maybe a year ago but Simon first took a portrait of me seven years ago. It was just when he was starting out on his Govanhill project and was shooting portraits of people he already knew . He took a picture of me lying on my living room floor. My dad has got a print of it somewhere but I’ll burn it when he dies. Not because it’s not a wonderful photo but just…
I love Simon’s work and was honoured to be a part of his recent exhibition. I was happy to just be one of the small portraits though and not one of the framed ones. I really think his work is a special record of a period of time for the area. With Govanhill being what it’s like and with all the people in it, it’s going to change so many times beyond now.