One of my favourite quotes on family is from the flawed psychiatrist, R.D. Laing. He wrote that ‘The family may be imagined as a web, a flower, a tomb, a prison, a castle.’
You can take it further and deepen your analysis. If your family is a flower, what kind of flower is it? Is it a rose that pricks, a nettle that stings, or bindweed that twists and winds and throttles.
I like that quote because it talks of the complexity of family life, the roles, the relationships, the difficulties we have in negotiating every aspect of it.
That difficulty, that dysfunction is the norm. So, few of us have super functional family lives where lying, deceit, cruelty, envy, depression, and despair don’t play their part alongside the warmth, security, comfort, and love.
I try to bring some of those elements to my photography of the worlds that surround me, to add some nuance, to hint at the struggles that lie beyond the image.
I do this in projects like Sofa Portraits where I see in Isabel the delight, the magic, but also the fatigue and boredom of childhood. I remember it well.
In the mental load of motherhood, I saw the exhaustion, both physical and mental, of Katherine as she lost herself in her new role of being a mother. She was and is an amazing mother. But you pay a price for that.
The other reason I like that Laing quote is photography can be imagined in the same way. It can be a web, a flower, a tomb. It can celebrate, depress, insult, or demean. It can do many things.
Photography has many uses. I like the idea that you shouldn’t only look at what’s in a photograph. You should also look at what a photograph was made for, who it was made for, what it does. Don’t ask for the meaning, ask for the use. Was it made to sooth, to prick, to defend, or to attack? Was it made to reveal or to be a mask.
My photographs reveal. My parents in Woolley slips under the skin of who they are. It reveals a moment in their lives that shifts with time. It was the last time my father was photographed with glasses, the last time they made that walk. Now that my father has passed away, it has become something else again.
Life changes. Photography changes. Nothing is fixed, and nothing stays still.
https://www.colinpantall.com/
Text: Colin Pantall
Voice: AI
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