My eldest son is ten years old. This was his last year of primary school and he is filled with the anxieties and excitement of transitioning to secondary school. He’s a naturally extroverted individual, like me, but also deeply sensitive and brooding, also like me. Odd that. He’s genuinely struggling with the lockdown - this is a special kind of hell for anyone who is both industrious and extroverted and he is.
I appreciate we need to do this thing right now; we need to make sure the hospitals can cope and that everyone misfortunate enough to be among the small number of people to whom this disease represents a grave threat gets the very best care our NHS can give.
But at the same time, we also need to appreciate that this effort is coming at some cost and once again the burden of our time is falling most heavily on our children. They will be the ones carrying the cost for this in the long run, literally and metaphorically. They are the least impacted by the virus but the most impacted by the lockdown.
It’s necessary and I hold and hug both my boys every day, but it’s hard to watch.
I took this image during my ‘outside time’ at the beginning of April. Perhaps the upside of this lock down is the chance for fathers to spend more time with their kids now that so many have been forced to stay home but the pain I see in my eldest son’s face is clearly writ here also and my heart goes out to her.
Ivan - The Star Garden
I've known Ivan for six years. He lives in my town and suffers from psychosis, which prevents him from being able to work. He is incredibly gentle, sincere and well balanced in life despite his disability.
He is especially fond of animals, maintains a strict vegan diet and has managed to secure a small plot of land in a rural area just outside Horsham where he keeps sheep, has a makeshift outdoor gym and a caravan he sometimes stays in.
This place is full of joy. It is in winter a quagmire of Somme like aspect, and cold and bleak but it has a rugged beauty and is is somewhere other than the ordinary world. It represents an oasis of truth and sincerity.
I am spending more time with Ivan in this very special location. I aim to tell more of his story through his interaction with this space, which represents a source of comfort and balance to him.
Abney Park
I found them in a small corner of Abney Park, among the tumbled down tombstones and the overgrown graves, just off from the main path. Fresh bark chippings had been strewn over the narrow walkways that linked the rows of broken plots. They crunched softly and satisfyingly under foot.
One grave held their attention. Time had long since exhausted the stonework and the memory of the loved one who rested only now existed in the printed sheets of research from genealogy websites. Their interest was historical but it was still about belonging.
Two of the small group appeared to be related; they had a familial sensitivity and seemed to be taking the most interest in the moss covered inscriptions. A third, slightly older and perhaps a little more reticent, held back slightly stooped and neutral but her knitted woollen hat sat amiably on her head like a tea cosy. This was what caught my eye; a small detail can be so charming and endearing.
I approached her and we struck up a conversation. Her name was Jane. They were there as a group foraging for a lost relative, a great great grandfather to the two cousins Henrietta and Mark who had been most interested in the headstones and had travelled down from the midlands to spend the weekend there. But it was Jane’s referencing of ‘being here with my partner’, indicating to Henrietta, that provided the most charming revelation.
Jane and Henrietta have been together for over 30 years. They met at Henrietta’s church where she was deacon at the time; she caught the eye of Jane who while otherwise married with children, had lived a life closeted from her true sexuality in much the same way so many people have done in the less enlightened past. Henrietta commented that the Church at that time was a little more ‘sniffy’ about sexuality than it is now but I pondered that perhaps certain elements of it might still be.
Jane and Henrietta built a life together. Jane’s husband and children in equal measure blessed the union, an outcome that I imagine can still not be taken for granted now.
We’ve come a long way.
My Boys
As long as I live I will never understand the desire that some people, though it’s mostly men, will have to climb the corporate ladder or rise to the heights of government or some other such body, when that achievement can only ever be at the expense of being around your children.
As long as I live and irrespective of whatever else I achieve, nothing will ever get as close to making me as proud as these two do every day. Well almost every day, when they’re having a hissy fit at bed time, refusing to brush their teeth or peeing on the floor rather than in the toilet despite what I’ve told them to do countless times one does find oneself asking what the hell they were thinking that having children was a great idea.
A Problem Shared
There was something about the way Helen interacted with her children that told me more about her possible situation than might otherwise have been apparent. It’s also likely that my own situation made me more sensitive to these nuanced interactions. At any other time I might simply have interpreted her loving devotion to Hester and Kingsley as nothing more than an innate parental love. But in that moment, it was more than this; it was also a compensation for something else, not guilt but a deeper sense of vulnerability we feel in our children from time to time when we know we are responsible for putting them through greater duress than is perhaps reasonable. In that moment I figured that Helen, like me, was in the process of separating from her children’s other parent.
We shared our respective situations. My time on the beach had been very contemplative and filled with angst and tinged with sadness. I am at least 50% of my children’s day to day care, perhaps even more but I still carry the sense of guilt that this process is causing them hurt. Helen and I talked and empathised for about half an hour and left each other feeling better.
The Murmuration
I saw him having a quiet moment on the broad promenade above the shingle beach. He was lost in the murmuration. His mouth moved silently as the starlings swirled and spun in the sky like a shimmering puzzle and his hands moved as it he guided them in their flight. He was truly among them in that moment; free as they were and as fleet and nimble and serene.
This little patch of light outside of St Bartholomew’s Church, Brighton
On the side of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Brighton, the sun shines in little pools of diffusely reflected light. The building opposite the church is adorned with perfectly angled windows that act like lenses to cast shards of brilliant white light that dapple the graffiti festooned wall in a chiaroscuro dance of light and dark. It’s one of those places that as a photographer you make a mental note of and head back to from time to time to see who you can find and persuade to stand for a moment in those shards.
Martin is pushing a trolley in front of him, his hands clasped around the bar highlight the wonderful details of the rings on his fingers and the white hair ponytail cements my interest in his character. Martin was in the merchant navy, managing crews and logistics for deep sea freight operations. He has been all over the world but it turns out he grew up two roads over from where my mother spent her childhood.
I’ve known Ian for a few years now. He is a super talented artist, illustrator and bike rider. I first photographed him randomly back in 2016 on a Sunday morning as he was riding out for breakfast after chasing a deadline for The Observer, his ink stained hands testimony to his trade and effort. Since then I’ve bumped into Ian at least every other time I’ve been in Brighton to shoot and he’s become something of a friend.
‘Professor Scolz’ mimed to me as he walked past, mimicking the pose Ian had just adopted on his bike a moment before. He was interested to see the results and that led to a conversation about what I was doing and why. He immediately understood the value of the human connections.
