Wren, with Blackbird

How can photography reveal something at the same time as protecting it?
How can it respect vulnerability while also witnessing?

My Dad was diagnosed with dementia in 2015. It was slow progressing, but by the time I was diagnosed with M.E. (chronic fatigue syndrome) in 2019 my Dad’s condition was bad enough that he couldn’t remember I was ill, or understand my limitations. It felt as though we went round in circles of support, often falling, failing and picking ourselves up again.

I always had the feeling that though his memory was fading he was still fundamentally himself. As his life became more restricted, one of his biggest pleasures was to watch birds in his garden. I bought him a book, Bird Identification for People with Dementia, to help him recognise the different bird species and look up their names.

I re-photographed the pictures of the wren and the blackbird from the book and separated the colours. I printed these colours as layers, putting the same piece of paper through the printer multiple times, so that the image accumulated over time. The rollers didnt work properly and each time the paper went through the printer it moved. The frame became more fractured, and the gaze of the birds multiplied. I enjoyed that the outcome wasn’t really controllable, and that the technology of the printer, which is usually invisible, was becoming part of the image.

Being with someone with dementia is tiring and I would enjoy the excuse to pop upstairs and reload the paper in the printer. But often I couldn’t leave my Dad alone and sometimes hours, days or even weeks would pass before I could print the next layer. I think about these as ‘chronic photographs’, accumulations of time, thought and care. How might these ideas be contained or held within the material of an image?

The layers are like memories, strata of experiences that assemble over time. Each new memory changes what is already there, laying down new pathways. These images feel directly connected to my Dad’s struggle to remember, to the unstable nature of memory itself. 

I think with photographs we constantly encounter the constraints of the surface – we almost get thrown back out of images, but I felt these layers letting me in.

Only later did I read that the wren and blackbird are two of only a few bird species that feed the young of other species, that offer a kind of unconditional care. It seemed so appropriate, at a time when I was part of a circle of care, I was both carer and cared-for.

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