It started here.
I was working on a book for my girls to share the stories of my childhood. Paging through my family albums was difficult.
There’s this one photo of me - age 3, back to the camera, looking over the wall at the zoo. It stopped me because it is just like many of the thousands I’ve taken of each of my girls. A small blond girl in her element. No face needed as the body language tells the whole story.
It stopped me because I know that most likely it was my father who took this image. He adored photography and taking photos of me.
And then, I was struck with immense sadness. An almost unbearable feeling of loss. To see on the pages how much he loved me.
Of course I knew this. But this evidence of my loss through this sharpened lens of motherhood knocked me over like a tidal wave. To see with my own eyes a parallel in what drove him to take these photographs.
A loving desire to capture his child.
In my late 30s, I started going to therapy. I told the therapist, “I have no reason to be like this, I have lots to be grateful for. But I feel sad a lot.”
My mother asked if I found it helpful. “Yes,” I replied. And she shared that my father struggled a lot with depression too.
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I had never known that. He died in a plane crash when I was 15.
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I had fallen into photography after becoming a mother. I always loved to paint but found it difficult with young children. Photography became a way to diffuse the challenges I was experiencing.
Through the lens, I was able to re-frame situations that had previously frustrated me.
Even though I was familiar with my father’s photographs, the image of me at the wall was the first time I’d seen my own shooting style mirrored back to me so clearly.
And I was led to explore our parallels as a key to learning more about him. To look for similarities in what interested us.
Did photography help him manage the ups-and-downs of parenthood like it had for me?
The following diptychs represent the connection I found between us :
images my father took of me took paired with images I had previously taken of my children.
