The roomsRoom III
Kept
Family photographs, and the hands that hold them
Every family keeps a box. Inside are faces that some of us are now too young to name. I spent a year opening those boxes with the people who own them, photographing photographs, and writing down whatever they remembered while we looked.
Album, Opened
She turned the pages slowly and said a name for every face. When she reached a face she could not name, she apologised to it.
The Box Under the Bed
Forty years of a family in a wooden chest that used to hold school uniforms. It smelled of camphor and paper.
Mother, Four Children
The youngest in this photograph is now a grandmother. She laughed when she saw it and said she remembers the photographer's shoes.
Held
I asked him to hold them up to the light. He held them close to his chest instead, then remembered I was there.
Father and Son, Twice
Two photographs taken twenty-six years apart: a father holding his son, then the son holding his own. Same pose. Neither planned it.
Brothers on the Settee
The settee is gone, the house is gone, one of the brothers is gone. The pose they made that afternoon is still here, still a little cheeky.
Behind the series
A photograph of a photograph sounds like repetition. It is not. The second picture records the first one being loved: the creases from being carried, the thumbprint on the corner, the hand that will not let go.
These are not my families, but for a few hours each, they let me belong.
