Be More Like Ivan

One of the interesting things to emerge from my collaboration with Ivan is the sense of our overlapping narratives; our lives could not be more different and yet I have had the feeling, for some time now, that I’ve been present in many of the images. This culminated with the idea of creating a sub-section of the project where the images were `based on my own memories of past trauma. These images are still of Ivan but my presence in them is made more apparent by the memory used to structure and influence them.

An obvious next step is to put myself in the frame, something that, like many photographers, I’m deeply uncomfortable with. Partly this is due to poor body image (my childhood trauma is associated with being overweight and since I am now I have to work hard to keep the negative emotions in check), but it’s also partly to do with not wanting to take anything away from Ivan’s experience. This project is about him, not me. Or is it?

I think all portrait projects are at least partly about the photographer; there is literally no way one can execute such work without being present in some way. Even if you set the scene and give the subject a remote release, you’re still the one who brought that scene to the point it could be made.

More significantly I am interested in how our lives diverged (we are about the same age, I’m only three years older), and how they could so easily have been the same; I could so easily have followed Ivan’s path and perhaps he could have followed mine. Neither of us came from what one might regard as a ‘privileged’ background, both of us are blessed with a half decent intellect, both of us went to ordinary but still decent comprehensive schools and yet our lives are so very different.

Overwhelmingly though, my sense is that different though they are, one is neither better nor worse than the other. I might struggle if I were transported overnight into Ivan’s world, and he would if he were transported into mine, but that has less to do with material notions of success and more with values. By far the greatest challenge for me would be to maintain Ivan’s standards of moral purpose; he eats no meat or animal produce of any kind, indeed uses nothing that is derived from an animal. He gives a significant percentage of his income to charity, even though he lives on a meagre income and has nothing left over at the end of each month. He is kind and generous to everyone, sees no one as responsible for his life and has no sense grievance to society for how the world has treated him. Indeed, quite the opposite; he regularly says he feels blessed and that there are a great many people with far more difficult lives than he. In a world where victimhood and grievance politics has taken hold like a weed, it is quite remarkable to hear him speak in such generous and conciliatory tones. I’m not sure who, in this country at least, would count as having a worse lot than Ivan save for those teetering on the very edge of life itself. Again though, that perspective is based on a very rigid set of value and parameters for what a ‘successful life’ looks like. Ivan’s perspective is eye opening, challenging and rewarding to hear and engage with.

Our lives are very different, but I aspire to be more like Ivan

Testimony

As a child at primary school I struggled to fit in. For some reason, whether it be fault with me, a character flaw or some other variable beyond my control I was rejected by both my peers and my teachers. I was called all manner of horrible things and emotionally bullied to the point of abuse. From the age of six through ten I was sat at a table on my own, this being the only solution the teachers could find to solving the conflict I regularly found myself in. After a number of years and following many pleas to my parents to fix the problem, my father, in a pique of frustration blurted out that I should just hit them if they said these things. And so the problems really started.

Anger and violence are rarely if ever the answer and so this behaviour only made my situation worse. I was routinely told that it was me that was the problem; that I was a violent delinquent thug; a ‘psycho’, an epithet that emerged once my counselling with a psychologist became public knowledge following a violent outburst on my part that resulted in a fractured jawbone. I was ten years old. This process of being repeatedly told you are a problem person has led to me sometimes internalising negative messages that while not aimed at me, implicate me by virtue of association. I tend to take things quite personally in these instances, I get defensive and angry at the injustice of those accusations and I lash out verbally in robust defence of otherwise fragile ego.

As bad as my experiences were, I do not see myself as a victim. I am a well-adjusted, self-actualised individual who takes ownership of his situation. I did find the adjustment to adult life hard and spent a good deal of time crashing into people, but it has also been ultimately rewarding and fulfilling. I am especially grateful for the people I have contact with, my friends, and the inspiration they bring. When I’m feeling especially angry or aggrieved at whatever political or ideological narrative I have internalised as a personal attack and feel the need to lash out, I often think what those people would do or, more compelling, what they would think of me if they read those things. This bring me back to equilibrium and temperance; the value I place in their friendship and the risk of jeopardising this with public expressions of negative emotion helps me feel more balanced.

The Long Grass Swirled

The imminent line of grass marks the boundary between the safe and knowable parts of the playing field and beyond it adventure and escape. The teachers and dinner time supervisors stand in line, like generals on the ridge line, watching for any infraction. We are not supposed to go into the long grass but in meadow I can for a moment escape and be safe. I venture in, crawling on my belly. Small spiders scurry ahead of me, a beetle fumbles over the bent pasture and around me the tall fronds murmur and whine with the mechanical precision of tiny beating wings. I lie there, carelessly curled up, knees drawn to my chest, head laying on the warm ground. The sun smiles down on me, kissing my cheek. The clamorous haste of the playground seem very far away and I am falling into a deep well of peace, boughed by the buttercups and golden hued prairie.  

Ivan - The Divided Self: Violence

Laughter bubbles infectiously in the background. I can hear the mixed crash and bang caper of the cartoons being screened to the class. It is the last day of term before. Comedy violence mixes with real violence in my head as I diligently copy out the dictionary, syllable by syllable, word by word in a task deliberately designed to feel as pointless as it is unfinishable.

I replay the gratifying crunch of my fist connecting with his jaw. Moments before I had been reading a book and then an paroxysm of anger took hold of me, his taunting words finally too much. In the blink of an eye I moved with deft swiftness, knuckles connecting with sinew and bone converting all me kinetic energy into pain. He crumples beneath me in a pathetic whimpering heap. I calmly sit down and await the inevitable consequence.

When it comes the teacher’s anger like a fury. I can still see the look of mixed horror, astonishment and anger on his face as he demands I go to him. Defiantly I tell him that if he wants me, he will have to come and get me. His obliging hand roughly lifts me clean from my chair.

In the large dining room, held hostage by this monster, he tells me how he wants to hurt me and I tell him that if he does then I will have him but he promises me he won’t leave any mark.

Ivan - The Divided Self: Hiding

Darkness cloaks me like a superpower. On this side of the curtain I am invisible to the class and I watch them carry on their daily lesson, small and inconsequential, oblivious to my gaze. I grow tall and powerful in this space. It is only a small area of the classroom sectioned off for the storage of materials, but in here, breathing in the smells of pencil lead, fresh paper and glue, I am almighty like the omnipotent God they teach us about.

Ivan - The Divided Self: The Altar Boy

Complex aromas of frankincense, candle wax and communion wine mix together in the pale archaic light. The starch stiff white robes constrain me in angelic posture and I shift awkwardly on my knees. I hear the autonomic recital of the priest, murmuring with rhythmic precision, the words of the mass that he has spoken a thousand times before. His ancient hands tremble over the Eucharist in solemn consecration and I ring the bell to signify the miracle of that moment.

Our connection to the land

I’ve been working recently with Laura Pannack, my favourite photographer with whom I’ve been lucky enough to develop something of a friendship and, more recently, a mentoring relationship. I pay her of course – love needs to be fed – but it’s been among the singularly most rewarding and productive engagements I’ve ever had.

Laura has been helping me develop direction when it comes to broader themes in projects, identifying how to create a photographic vision based on the themes I want to explore and then how to translate that to a single image. We’ve been using that dialogue to give direction and focus to my work with Ivan on what I guess will by default come to called ‘The Divided Self’.

At the moment the project is still very much focused on Ivan and his experience of psychosis rather than psychosis in general. As much as I would like to be able to take a more open direction to a project theme, in the same way that (ostensibly) portrait photographers such as Laura do, or indeed Alec Soth, Kovi Konowiecki and, in particular, Bryan Schutmaat, whose work I adore almost as much as Laura’s, I find myself still inexorably drawn to the person and the corporeal.

Nevertheless, these images represent an effort to break a little with the corporeal and find a way of representing it within the context of the environment. I often try to think of how literature might inform my work and see whether there might be parallels between the authors I’ve enjoyed in my life and the themes they themselves address. Steinbeck and Hardy immediately spring to mind as authors who ostensibly write about their characters’ relationship to, and connection with, the land.

With Ivan, the principal theme is his connection with the land and how that provides him with a source of succour and comfort. It always strikes me that he is most alive and engaged when he is outdoors, so the idea is to develop a series of images of him in a more varied landscapes, connected with the land.

Bright Young Things

Four years ago I shot a project based on the transition from youth to adulthood and used the skate park in my local town as a base to work from. That location is interesting because each generation of young adult tends to congregate around the area, forming social groups and developing strong bonds. The location is a focal point in the town; if you want to engage with the next generation of our adult society and find out what they care about, what their hopes and dreams are, this is as good a place as any to explore.

I’m always nervous about engaging with this generation however; the vile cynicism and neuroticism of our society means that even the most open minded and progressive of individuals would caveat their thought processes when you explain that you, a middle age male, are photographing ‘young teenagers’. It is a form of bias of course, but like all other forms of bias, has little to do with deep seated structural prejudice. It is simply what Daniel Khaneman called system one thinking or what psychologists have called ‘heuristics’ since the early 19780s.

Nevertheless, I am fascinated and intrigued by these ‘bright young things’, the representatives of their group being anually refreshed at the skate park as one generation moves on to explore their adult lives and the next group begins their own initial foray.