My current photography project is one that hits close to home, both emotionally and literally. All my life my father has been a source of inspiration and comfort for me, especially when in 2015 I finally cut all contact with my mother, but to understand where I'm coming from for this project I need to give you a brief history of my life and interactions with my dad.
His whole life my dad was a very active man, enjoyed hiking, camping, fishing, shooting etc. If something was outdoorsy, my dad was into it. He even had a team of four Siberian Huskies that he used to race at championships across the country. However when I had just turned 2 years old he was diagnosed with seropositive rheumatoid arthritis which left him unable to do many of the hobbies and passions he previously loved and put his all into.
He tried to not let this stop him from sharing his love of the outdoors with me and my brother growing up, we would still go camping and and on walks as kids but my father would either have to sit out and watch us or we would all have to go slowly with many breaks, on trails not nearly as intense and interesting as he would have liked. Even as a child I could see how much it hurt him to not be able to do this stuff (and just how much it would physically hurt when he did try).
Even though he couldn't do these thing himself anymore, he instilled in me a love and passion for all things outdoors and is always ready to listen intently when I regale him with what hikes and such I have been on recently, hanging on my every word. This is why my current photography project is about putting my father back into these landscapes that he wishes he could physically be in. I am currently attempting to do this by playing around with double exposures in the darkroom, and the difference dominance's in each image being shifted from my fathers face to the landscape, trying to get all the hurt and longing he feels and the sense of loss I feel into these prints and thus transferred to the viewer.
Attached to this post are a few examples of test prints I
have been working on using some portraits I have taken of my dad, and some stills from a recent hike up Cadir Idris in the Snowdonia National park.
As these are test prints I know there are a lot of kinks to iron out, as well as many directions I can take this double exposure theme. The first four images were created by sandwiching the negatives into the enlarger frame at the same time, whilst the last two were done separately by under exposing the landscape, then switching out the negative and underexposing my fathers face to the same paper before developing it.
I have spoken with both of my tutors about display sizes and whether the images should be in a sequence or as stand alone pieces. The most difficult part of this project -aside from the emotional labour- is deciding how to narrow down all the possibilities of where I want to take this project of passions, as is evident from this snapshot of just one page of my visual diary following a meeting with just one of my tutors.
Comments