Since the 1980s, McEachern has investigated issues of gender, domesticity, and labour. Informed by feminist theory and taking her lived experience as a point of departure, her work comments on the social construction of identity and history. In series such as The Family in the Context of Childrearing, 1985, and On Living at Home, 1986–87, McEachern explores gender and the intersection of public and private space through closely cropped photographs combined with text. McEachern taught at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design/NSCAD University in Halifax from 1977 until her retirement in 2013.

Image: Susan McEachern, Part Four: The Outside World (detail), 1986–87, six chromogenic prints, 40.6 x 50.8 cm each, CMCP Collection, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

For further reading, see:

Kunard, Andrea. Susan McEachern: Structures of Meaning. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, 2004.

Fisher-Taylor, Gail. “At the Epicentre.” In 13 Essays on Photography, introduction by Geoffrey James, 144–160. Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, 1990.

Simon, Cheryl. “Domestic Subversion: Susan McEachern’s On Living at Home.” In Frame of Mind: Viewpoints on Photography in Contemporary Canadian Art, edited by Daina Augaitis, 36–47. Banff: Walter Phillips Gallery, 1993.