The magazine of the art-form of the photo-essay
“A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine. Fabulous!”
Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film & documentary maker
Jan 2016 back issue
by Paddy Summerfield
Paddy Summerfield's photographic essay, Mother and Father (published
2014), is a moving photo-novel of the final years of a sixty-year marriage.
He reflects through the lens of his own vision the bond between his mother
and father, which even the effects of Alzheimer's cannot break. By
avoiding close-ups and direct portraits, these thoughtful, often melancholy,
images form a personal piece which is simultaneously universal and
timeless.
For ten years Summerfield felt compelled to photograph his parents, trying
to hold onto something inevitably slipping away. As he says: “I recorded
my mother's loss of the world, my father's loss of his wife and, eventually,
my loss of them both. I wanted to give something back.”
Mainly the images are restricted to this enclosed and secluded garden, but
the central section of the book shows their holiday visits to the Welsh coast, where the raven appears. Finally, their
once cultivated garden has become a neglected wilderness, in the absence of the two people who had spent long days
there, who cared for it, and for each other.
