I randomly met Jerry earlier this year while on a camera walk around my old student haunts in Sheffield. He was outside tending to his garden wearing an army surplus jumper and fatigues held up by bright red braces. With his 80s post punk hair and smart glasses he looked every inch the individual character he later turned out to be. Our connection however was more his doing than mine. While his idiosyncratic but still dapper appearance had certainly caught my eye, it was he who made the introduction by commenting on my camera. We chatted for about ten minutes; I took his picture outside but really in my head I was eyeing up the tall window of the Victorian building he lived in and thinking how amazing the light would be inside. I confess I rather invited myself in to see if we might take a picture inside and ended up spending a good hour chatting over tea.
The light inside was indeed wonderful but really, I needed a tripod (which I didn’t have with me) and probably a wider angle lens (which I didn’t even own at the time) in order to make the most of the situation.
Since I was back up visiting my mum over Christmas, I thought I would try to reconnect with Jerry and see if we might make a follow up portrait. Part of my development this year has been to start doing more arranged portraits with people at their homes rather than relying on the serendipity of the chance encounter. This has been necessary, not just from a developmental perspective, but because in order to continue the development of the ‘Here Among the Flowers’ project I felt I needed to broaden the theme to include other aspects of masculinity. In order to maintain thematic coherence, the focus shifts from the Jungian concept of the anima (the internal feminine) to that of ‘the shadow’, the unconscious aspect of our personality.
The Shadow incorporates those facets that our conscious ego does not identify in itself. While not wholly negative, since it is in our nature to reject the darker sides of our character, it is into the shadow that we tend to push those aspects that we are less comfortable with. As with the anima/(animus), full development of our ego depends on integrating our conscious being with the Shadow.
As with the Anima, portraying this theme requires a certain amount of stripping back of the subject’s protective outer layers but it also needs a different approach to the light. Shooting indoors seems like both the right aesthetic approach and the required practical approach given the winter weather. It means the subject can either be completely nude (which is another fascinating developmental experience), or else more readily shirtless without the weather being the limiting factor.
Jerry lives frugally and amid an overwhelming mix of chaos and style. His flat is a maelstrom of cubby of empty bottles waiting to be recycled, ancient audio equipment held together with insulation tape and wardrobes bursting with stylish suits, houndstooth coats and Jeffrey West shoes. The dimply lit stairwell is home to half a dozen bikes, some I remember as design classics from my childhood (Kirk Precision cast magnesium bike anyone?) and on the window ledge in his sitting room, a demi john sits half full of a cloudy yellowing and potent looking liquid that is apparently apple wine yet to be tested. He has two cats that sleep in various old draws that are dotted around the flat. The walls are adorned with various curios, Knick knacks and photographs of his daughter, with whom he maintains a great relationship. He had a penchant for dressing as the dapper gentleman and his collection of couture is well developed, sophisticated and highly individual.
After we took these pictures, we went for a stroll on to the top of Stanage Edge, a gritstone outcrop high on the Peak moorland where I used to climb as a student. The weather was bracing; the fog thick on the rusty red heather giving the place a very ‘Wuthering Heights’ feel. That metaphor was apt for the character of Heathcliff is himself the very personification of the Shadow.
I confess I don’t quite understand jerry just yet, but I am drawn to him. He is at once both complex and yet unpretentious. He has a deep authenticity that perhaps places him at the fringes of the mainstream and I suspect he hides a darker and more brooding side to his nature, buried in his shadow. But it is for precisely these reasons that I am drawn to him and for what photographing him can tell us about our humanity, both the positive side and our less visible darker side.
