Friend is known for using the tension between images and sound to document conflict. Of Border Country, she writes: "The voices provide an emotional counterpoint to the formal images of the institutions..[prompting the]... listener/viewer to reflect both on the experience of the immigration system itself and on the wider concepts of migration and borders."
Friend's latest project The Home Front was nominated in 2012, and again in 2013, for the Prix Pictet, a global award in photography and sustainability.
Books
Homes and Gardens: Documenting the Invisible, London: Camerawork, 1996.
No Place Like Home: Echoes from Kosovo, USA: Midnight Editions, 2001. ISBN 978-1573441193.
Border Country, Belfast Exposed Photography/The Winchester Gallery, 2007. ISBN 978-0952421795.
Will the bruises still show? in: 'Signals: festival of women photographers' Interchange Studios, London, 1994.
A Documentary Photographer’s strategies of representation in Homes and Gardens: Documenting the Invisible (1996).
Claustrophobia. In: Claustrophobia. Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 1998 ISBN 9780907594581.
John Kobal Photographic Portrait Award. In: "John Kobal photographic portrait award 2000". National Portrait Gallery, London. ISBN 9781855143180.
No Place Like Home: Echoes of Kosovo (2001), a chapter in Representations of War, Migration and Refugeehood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives published by Routledge, New York, 2014 eds. Christiane Schlote (University of Zurich, Switzerland) & Daniel Rellstab (University of Vaasa, Finland).
Selected exhibitions
Belfast Exposed Photography, Belfast, 16 November 2007 – 11 January 2008.
European Central Bank Europe Photographic Award 2008: finalists’ show Cologne and Frankfurt.
Gallery 44, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Toronto (Canada) 10 September – 16 October 2010.
2013: Images from The Home Front series in group show at Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art.
2013 / 2015: The Home Front, An Impressions Gallery touring exhibition, curated by Pippa Oldfield, Impressions Gallery, 2013 http://www.impressions-gallery.com/exhibitions/exhibition.php?id=57. Toured to DLI Museum and Art Gallery, Durham, 2014 and University of Hertfordshire Galleries, 14 November 2014 – 31 January 2015 www.herts.ac.uk/artsandgalleries
Research papers
Friend, M (2007) Homes and Gardens: Documenting the invisible, Home Cultures, Volume 4, Number 1, March doi:10.2752/174063107780129699
Friend, M (2010) Representing Immigration Detainees: The Juxtaposition of Image and Sound in Border Country, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Volume. 11, Number. 2, May