When, at the dawn of a new digital age, McMurdo started photographing children in the context of the museum, it was because she perceived that the world of simulation was becoming part of our reality and that our relationship to both the real world and to the objects within it was changing irredeemably.

In Girl with Bears, Royal Museum of Edinburgh a young girl is pictured crouched in front of a display case, viewing the bears behind glass in the vitrine just ahead of her. McMurdo says: “I was thinking about children’s engagement with the outside world, especially in the face of the rapidly evolving culture of gaming and the screen … the museum was the place where everything important was held. Now with the internet, that is very different. If a child wants to learn about something, they don’t naturally go to the museum. They go online. Here, you can see a split reflection of two girls in the vitrine, but only one of them actually looking.”

McMurdo’s work captures the significant key moments of our times just at as culture re-orientates itself.

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