Alison Lapper talks to Victoria Lucas about her career as an artist

Alison Lapper's work is mainly about her experiences and feelings about being a disabled woman and, more recently, about becoming a disabled mother. Although she is also a painter and installation artist, she is best known for her photography. Challenging, insightful and beautiful - her work is controversial in a world that sees the disabled female body as anything but beautiful. I talked to her in West Sussex, where she lives with her young son Parys.

Vicky: How did you first get into photography?

Alison: When I was doing my Fine Art degree in Brighton I stumbled into it. I was making sculptures of myself with tissue paper and I began to realise I wasn't this ugly blob that I had been brought up to believe I was, and that my body was actually quite attractive. I thought that if I could put myself up on the wall as a nude sculpture then maybe I could go on and do this with photography. So really the whole experience was about looking at my own body and my disability. I was 27 when I did this and I had never been taught to look at my own body. As a woman in society you don't do it and as a disabled woman you certainly don't do it. You're told that you're ugly and grotesque. Why would you want to look at yourself? I was lucky that my course was flexible and allowed me to experiment with sculpture and photography.

Vicky: Did you experience discrimination at university?

Alison: There were one or two tutors who never gave me a tutorial, didn't want to talk about my work, and basically could not hack that there was a disabled art student who was using her own body as part of her own art work. I thought, fine, if you want to be stupid, fine, not my problem. But you have to learn that. It's a long process and it takes a long time to not be offended by people that can't basically hack you. On the other hand there were people there who were just brilliant.

Vicky: Your most famous work is probably the photograph of you as the Venus de Milo. How did that come about?

Alison: I was in the library and flicking through some art books and came across the Venus de Milo and thought, 'that's me!'. I wanted to recreate this because it's such a classic image. It was quite a tongue in cheek kind of thing for a disabled person to put herself up as the Venus de Milo because she is looked upon as being the most beautiful sculpture, and because her arms fell off she's kind of allowed to be disabled. Nobody ever says at all that she is disabled, but they look at me and say 'oh she's disabled!'. Where's the difference? I have no arms either. I'm more beautiful than she is because I'm alive, I'm living flesh and blood. But I'm labelled something else. Why? So really it was to challenge people's perceptions of the Venus de Milo. And it did. It was ten years ago now and still people remember it.

Vicky: I first met you in 1999 when you were exhibiting your work at the Fabrica Gallery in Brighton. I remember that beautiful large photograph of you as an angel. How did that come about?

Alison: As a disabled person, people patronise you, and tell you how wonderful and brave you are. But I'm not. I'm just trying to live my life the best way I can and doing what I want to do. So I thought, how can I portray this feeling that people think I am an angel when actually I'm not. So I photographed myself as an angel. This is how people see me but if they look closely there are elements in the photograph that make me naughty, cheeky, rude, sexual, all these things that people do not view angels or disabled people to be like. My halo slipped a long time ago!

Vicky: You also created an image of yourself with different facial expressions.

Alison: I did twelve facial images from laughter to crying to angry and so on. All the kind of facial images that people don't expect you to have. Because if you come across as an angry crip, people think that you're aggressive, bitter and twisted.
To every aspect of my work there's a reason behind why I do what I do and whether Joe Public gets it or not is entirely up to them. I had one really snotty remark from a woman at the Fabrica exhibition, which she wrote in the comment book. She was basically saying, 'what makes her any special or different just because she happens to be disabled?'. And the whole exhibition made her angry. Well, I am disabled, I haven't got another body to use. She just didn't get it.
I still have a lot to say about my own body and my own disability and once it becomes boring to me, then I'll stop. But at the moment there are so many different issues that just come up in day-to-day life. I did a project up in Nottingham in 2000 when my son was 6 months old. It was about the fact that on dry land, as it were, I need hands to help me with him. So I did some black and white photographs where I'm nude and my son is nude and a fluorescent pair of pink hands are coming out and holding him. I need that. If I don't have carers for my son, I don't have my son at home. But they are also incredibly intrusive. I have to have another being in my life that isn't my lover, who I have to live with and is in my space because I need that help for my son. Just that on its own is a minefield.

Vicky: In 2000, you spoke about disability and genetics at the ICA. You talked about how, when pregnant, people would say to you 'Is it going to be disabled like you?'.

Alison: They never asked whether it was going to be a boy or a girl.
I did some work on that. I did a photograph of my womb and the scan and put the words 'boy or girl' on to it and it was the question that no one ever asked. Instead, people asked, 'is it going be like you then? Oh is that fair?'.

Vicky: Have you sold any work?

Alison: I've never made money out of my photography. That's partly why I paint Christmas cards for the Mouth and Foot Painting Association. I wouldn't be able to afford my house and help for my son otherwise. I've never really had any of my photography work bought, maybe two pieces in ten years. Why don't people buy images of a naked disabled woman?

Vicky: Maybe non-disabled people think a naked disabled woman is too shocking or offensive?

Alison: Probably. When I was a child, I was basically brought up to think that I would never have sex, never have a baby, people wouldn't fancy me because I didn't look like a supermodel. But how many women of my age can look in the mirror and say 'Hey, I like you, you're all right'. And on a day-to-day basis I can do that. I do feel sexy and I do feel attractive and I do feel beautiful and all the other things that people aspire to. I love the way people are shocked when they find me attractive and I play up to it. I find it hysterical.
But I find it a shame that my work, and the work of other disabled artists, isn't taken as seriously as it should be. If I and other disabled people hadn't modelled for the sculptures by Marc Quinn, there wouldn't have been a seminar about disability at the Tate Liverpool. If it had been disabled artists who had created those sculptures, who would have taken it seriously? Although Marc's intentions were good and I respect that, it's a shame that it's my body but I can't afford to do marble statues. I'd thought about doing a sculpture like that way before he did but I have to make do with tissue paper and PVA medium. But because he was a well-known artist, people took him seriously. But he's able bodied. As a disabled artist, I find it frustrating that we were given a platform via the backdoor of an able bodied artist who is dealing with issues of disability. I'm not slating the guy because I actually really like him and his intentions were good, but I just feel that if I had done that, would it be in the Tate Liverpool? I think not.
It's only been in the last 3 or 4 years that people are starting to take my work seriously. It's a challenge. But I've had challenges all my life. If I didn't have a challenge, I'd be lost. Having my son Parys has been my greatest challenge yet and it will continue to be so for the rest of my life.