I found Marcy in the park, taking advantage of the outside exercise bike and the late winter sun. As I approached her and waved her demeanour changed and she suddenly became discernibly anxious. She got off the exercise bike and backed away explaining that she was not engaging with anyone due to having a lung condition and being fearful of the risk that Covid therefore represented.
I explained I understood and that I didn’t mean to make her feel anxious, just that her happy peddling in the park seemed like too good a picture not to try and make. I explained I could easily keep more than 2m away and then, hearing her accent, asked her where she was from.
‘Botson’ she said ‘but that was a long time ago’. I said I knew Boston quite well from having been there on business and then asked her what field of work she had been in. She explained that she had been an experimental psychotherapist, another point of mutual connection as I told of my uncle in California, also a reasonably eminent psychotherapist.
Seeing she was more at ease and having talked more I asked if I could photograph her, just because we could, because our humanity demands it and because I could sense she was a good soul. She agreed. We exchanged details and a few days later I got a wonderful email from her, saying that she was sorry if I felt she had misjudged me but having now seen my work, she recognised the true nature of my soul. A week after that, we ran into each other again.
‘Two chance meetings so close together is the universe’s way of telling us there is something we can learn from each other’ I said. She agreed.
Ogmore by Sea
Sun dappled sand shimmers in the late evening sun. Moire patterns dance and swarm like a murmuration. The three teenagers sit casually, lying at ease and collapsed carelessly against knees and the warm stone granite. Growing up in this seaside town is an emulsion of beauty and boredom; there’s nothing to do they say, no fun places to go so we come down here to play our music and watch the sun go down.
There but for the grace of god: Chris
I met a group of young adults I know five years ago. They had all been collaborators in a project based on the transition from youth to adult hood. Now in the early 20s, the group were hanging out together in the skate park having arranged specifically to meet on that day at that place in order to remember a close friend who had died a few days earlier.
It’s a tragic but all too common story; a group of young people in a car that crashes at speed. Their friend and another passenger were killed. The driver was in a critical condition.
Chris was also in the car. Some how walked away. He is very lucky to be alive but he has lost one of his best friends and is dealing with that loss.
His friendship with Jack was something instantly recognisable and in talking with them both, their closeness, warmth and love for each other was inspiring. Masculine friendships are rarely celebrated or even recognised but perhaps this is changing. These two certainly provide hope for that recognition.
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.
