I’ve spent countless nights this year rating photographs of my dying dad according to a scale of 1-to-5-stars, sometimes through tears, and sometimes with the objective efficiency of an editor. It’s been a simultaneously horrible and wonderful task. When I described the process to a friend he told me I should let the joy and the pain be so intertwined that I can’t tell the difference… and that is how it’s been.

 

A few weeks ago I was at a talk by the artist Lasse Johansson. As interesting as I find his work, my head was deep in The Dad Project, and I wanted it to stay there. But one remark really struck me. He was talking about his project ‘I am here’ which was a response to the fact that his home was to be demolished, and he said ‘the context of the work was a dragon to slay not a piece of clay to mold’. Slaying the dragon is a reactive process rather than a proactive one. A project approached as ‘clay molding’ can be well reported within an academic structure, but this doesn’t suite a project that took form as it occurred.

 

So, it’s difficult to know how to discuss this work formally. I might try to address, first the photographic, then the personal elements. But it’s not possible, as the two are inseparable. I’ve concluded that the best way to impose some structure on my thoughts is to be guided by the chronology of the story I’ve documented. I hope you’ll understand that this essay is very much part of the personal journey that The Dad Project has sent me on. It has to be written with the same voice expressed by the photos, an honest and artless one. To adopt an academic tone would be in conflict with the essence of the work.

 

Cancer came along

My dad got sick in December 2007 and had a major operation the next February. In the run up to it I had assumed, as I always do, that everything would be fine. The highly specialized, and somewhat risky, 8 hour ‘Whipple procedure’ actually took 12. And while we waited the extra hours I began to feel that perhaps, just maybe, there was a chance things wouldn’t go our way. But eventually he came out, came round, began the fight to recover, and my naïve optimism returned; How did I ever doubt my instincts – nothing bad could happen to my dad.

 

I had a conversation about optimism with dad in The Royal Marsden Hospital. He chose to go there for drugs trials after the doctors found, in October 09 that The Whipple had not, in fact, whipped out the cancer and there was no further treatment for his terminal, and very rare type of bile duct cancer. Dad seemed to feel the need to justify why he had continued to paint a rosy picture for us all. In his own words; ‘some people will always assume the pessimistic position; that the glass is half empty, and some will take the optimistic one; that it’s half full. I like to take the half full position because I think it’s a waste of energy and goodwill to assume the negative… unless it’s actually proven. Some might consider that naive, but I’d guess those people prefer pessimism, which is fine, but that’s not my position’. He described it as a glow inside him that had always been there, and that reassured him everything would be ok. (When I thought back on his description I realized how much it sounded like a spiritual reference. Many people draw the equivalent inner-strength from their faith in ‘god’s’ presence within them, but he didn’t mean it that way).

 

To photograph, or not?

I have the glow too, and this was a huge influence on my desire to photograph dad’s journey towards death. Firstly, because he gave it to me - the glow. I don’t think there are many greater gifts you can give your child, and I wanted to thank him somehow. And secondly, with the glow inside me, I knew it would be ok. It wasn’t that I thought he would defy the medical prognosis and live, but by doing The Dad Project we could look at the half-full-glass together. That seemed to me the best we could do with our time.

 

My desire to undertake this challenge was not followed easily by the decision to… far from it. I’ve never deliberated so heavily over anything before. For a while this decision became the most agonizing aspect of my grief. I wasn’t too anxious about dad’s feelings, as we were able to discuss our concerns easily. He was keen that we go ahead, if it was important to me, but only if I felt the process would be good for me. My initial plan was that this would be collaboration, so his encouragement was crucial. However, I was most worried about upsetting my mum, and found it much harder to open conversations about the idea with her. This inhibited me significantly in the early stages. In retrospect, I think this was as much due to my hesitance as hers, and I probably could have involved her much more, but that’s how it occurred. (I am trying my hardest to avoid dwelling on regret. When you live beyond someone you love, there is always room for regretting what you didn’t share. Just as when you under-take the documentation of a story, there is always room for regretting what you didn’t capture. Regret, which is to the past what pessimism is to the future, seems a waste of goodwill and energy).

 

I became aware that by undertaking this project I would be obliged to experience my dad’s last days from the self-critical position of a creator, and this made me doubt it was a good idea, even for myself. So I found myself seeking further confirmation of this doubt, and it wasn’t hard to find:

 

· Surely I don’t want to be thinking about the rigors of creating a cohesive visual production while my dad’s dying? It’s a taxing enough task at the best of times.

 

· I’ve never had any desire to tell my own story through my work. In all honesty, I’ve often regarded self-referential photography as embodying a level of narcissism that I’m not comfortable with.

 

· We’re not a photo family. None of us like having our pictures taken. This is pretty weird way to try changing that.

 

· My photography takes me away from grief to a happy place; it’s a positive and productive distraction. If dad is my work how do I escape?

 

· More importantly, my work gives me things to tell dad about. He’s lifted by knowing that we’re preceding with our usual lives, and not wallowing in sadness. The only thing I can do to make his end happier is to show him that I’m going to be fine, and to be fine I need to pursue my ambitions. Dad believes in hard work and it’s rewards.

 

· And back to mum. I always came back to how it would be for mum. The most basic consideration being that she never liked the photos I took of her. But, on a bigger scale, she was already struggling against so much. Doing anything that might make things harder for her wasn’t an option.

 

All these considerations put me off the idea entirely. For a short time I felt resolved that I wouldn’t proceed.

 

Of course, I talked at length with many people - friends, family and near strangers. Whenever it was possible really, I wasn’t shy about it. Nobody knew what to advise - ‘you should definitely do it if you think you can, but I can’t tell you to’ - ‘I know I couldn’t do that’ – ‘you’d need to be so brave’ – ‘it could be amazing, but only if it’s right for all of you’. These ambiguous responses made my head spin, but just through trying to make the decision, conversations opened that enriched me hugely.  Discussions about the ethics of creative documentary practices became more relevant and purposeful than they’d been before. But more significantly, people would always share their own closest experience of death, or sickness, or family struggles, and often said that they rarely talked about it. I realized that I ‘d joined the majority of humanity who knew the feeling of great loss. This isn’t something to keep quiet about. If just the possibility of The Dad Project could open all these dialogues, how many more people would be reached if I were actually to do it? The project could be as universal as it is personal.

 

This realization re-opened the possibility again. And there were two more clinching factors:

 

· Purely as a photographer, it’s indisputable. I must do it. Every documentary photographer is seeking to reveal truths. If I choose to tell the story of losing my dad it’s our story, it’s my dad and me; therefore it’s true. I’ll be liberated of the eternal and integral problem of the documentary photographer… (Will I? still debatable of course, but I decided to go with yes).

 

· And purely as a daughter, this was my first and last chance to work with my dad. I had to take it.

 

Beginning to shoot

During these months of indecision, I’d only been taking photos that I thought they’d like. Mum wanted a nice photo of the two of them before dad began to look to too ill. It was around March that I began to navigate my route into the real story. A few influences on the MA course eased me gently into taking more meaningful photos. One morning in class we watched Pedro Meyer’s ‘I photograph to remember’, an intimate and detailed account of his father’s life, and his death to cancer. Patrick wanted to show it as an example of an effective audio narrative. It was indeed extremely effective, and obviously resonated with me as more than a good use of audio. But there was something in the tone that didn’t appeal to me. It felt gloomy. While it did make me think ‘yes, I could do it too, just record the story, why not?’ I didn’t want to make pictures like that. I didn’t want to highlight suffering. That afternoon Leonie Purchase came to show us her work ‘In the Shadow of Things’, her attempt to help her mother deal with the obsessive-compulsive aspect of her depression. I found Leonie’s images simultaneously raw and elegant, and when she spoke she was unassuming and eloquent. Her work, but more crucially her words, made me want to make my photos. She told us how it had been for her family, about the objections she’d dealt with and the resolutions they’d found. She explained that the process had pushed her mother towards facing her issues. She spoke about what the photographs did for her, and about the validation that came from other people’s responses to the story. As I knew I would face similar issues, seeing the evocative photographs that had come out of Leonie’s, coaxed me to wonder what would come out of mine.

 

I began the project without really beginning it. I made it easy on myself. I took photos that made me happy on sad days. The pictures I found myself taking were reminiscent of photos I used to take in my ‘honeymoon period’ with the camera. They were free from the constraints of purpose, and they pleased me. I’m not sure if I would have allowed myself to snap so indulgently if it wasn’t for the influence of Peter Fraser. When he began to tutor us he gave us a brief that seemed, at first, unintelligible. So, my interpretation of it felt like a guess. I decided he might be suggesting that we make photos that help us to see. Whether or not he was didn’t really matter, because that’s what I tried to do, and I had some success. Whenever I was consumed by the bleakness of the cancer I took photos, if I couldn’t sleep I took photos, and if the morning light hit my bed in a way that erased the gloom I took photos, and it made me happy. I was seeing a narration of my moods occur. But I knew that these photos would only speak back to me, and not beyond. That was the impetus for me to take another step forward. How do I really show what I’m feeling? Turn the camera around? So I photographed my face when I was sad. It seemed a ridiculously obvious idea. I wouldn’t have even called it an idea. It was the only thing I could think of to move myself on. I assumed the images looked clichéd and I felt strange about doing it. This was another sort of self-indulgence, and one I never thought I’d embrace. It felt dangerously close to narcissism. I didn’t show the photos to anyone for a while.

­

Then, I began to shoot the details of mum and dad’s house. These images felt sadder. I still wasn’t quite brave enough to turn the camera on my dad, but my photos were beginning, very cautiously, to hint at the real story. ­ A crucial moment for me was the first time I witnessed a startling manifestation of dad’s deteriorating health. He walked into the kitchen carrying a glass of the energy-milkshake that was intended to fatten him up. He lost his balance and it smashed on the floor. Although my camera was around my neck I couldn’t bring myself to photograph the moment as it occurred. It would have felt like a cruel and detached response. The duality of my role was suddenly explicit; is it actually possible to be a daughter and a photographer at once? After I’d cleared up the broken glass (all the time thinking ‘that was a photo - I’m missing the story’) I managed to take a picture. Although I was slightly disappointed by my initial hesitance, on reflection I realized that what I hadn’t captured was as relevant to our story as what I had. This photograph felt like a turning point. The fact that I couldn’t shoot everything was the story. And so, I became more comfortable with telling it.

 

 

Practicalities

With this new perspective, came an interest in representing the technical side of my project. Most of my contemplation of the impending loss occurred while at the computer editing my images. A computer screen seems an unlikely companion to share ones grief with, but the project required and enabled me to get used to this relationship. I didn’t know how I’d capture that elegantly though. I took a lot of self-portraits featuring my camera. I knew these images could be perceived as tired and unoriginal, but I really wanted to take them. The camera was integral to the project after all, and I was only slightly less fond of it than I was my dad.

 

I bought the Canon 5D mark II for its HD video function. This obviously offered a new layer of creative possibilities, but I decided to use it in a very simple way in order to focus my energy on documenting as much as possible, rather than experimenting with equipment. I wasn’t aiming to make a film, but rather to gather content that would enrich my photography. I began recording conversations with dad. I would set the camera on a tripod, frame the shot as I would compose a still, and let it roll. Being so easy to use, the camera created no technical challenges. This was enormously valuable to me. With the amount of obstacles already inherent to the project, I didn’t want to be concerned with my gear. For this reason I used no lighting and stuck with my 50mm lens. This was the very lens I was using back when I was taking the pictures I described earlier as ‘free from the constraints of purpose’. (Of course, I felt the weight of purpose greatly now, but a least my associations with the tool were of a freedom). It’s the first lens I ever bought, Canon’s cheapest, and I love it. I hadn’t used it for about 5 years since I started shooting for clients and bought a fancy ‘L series’ lens. I just rediscovered its joys when we were asked to shoot with a fixed lens at the beginning of the course.

 

Grappling for a plan

The more I felt the project was underway, the more aware I became that I didn’t really have a plan. I thought some good photos were occurring, but wasn’t sure if they were enough. Would I just end up with a pile of gentle images about a dad dying a little too early of an all-too-common death; images too sad for my family and too ordinary for an audience? Maybe I needed words to reveal the weight of the story outside the frames? I tried writing but my thoughts never flowed on the page. Should I impose a conceptual methodology on my picture taking? Then, at least I’d have a way to measure what I was achieving. I thought of many plans, but never stuck to them. How could any one approach be the right way to document my dad’s ending? I was always waiting for the ‘right time’ to work it all out with dad. I wanted to impress him with my plan and to find one that brought clarity to both of our positions. I’d never felt dad understood my work one hundred percent, and I hoped perhaps The Dad Project could change that. But I was fumbling. The moment where everything fell into place never happened.

 

No prognosis

My unsystematic approach was mirrored by, and I suppose to an extent caused by, the uncertainty of the illness. This was when I began to feel the lack of prognosis most acutely. Dad hadn’t wanted one so we didn’t have one. I thought about asking for myself, but that didn’t seem right. I wanted to know for wholly practical reasons. Every brief needs a timescale, without one how can you know whether your goals are achievable? You can’t, so better not to set any… and I fumbled on. For months I’d been feeling a terrible inner conflict between spending time with dad and getting on as normal. Every single option - take on a job, have dinner with friends, or just whether to sleep in on a Sunday - every single choice was weighted with the fact that I could be with dad instead. It was the hardest aspect of the year for me. If I knew how long we had left with him, I’d know how much to prioritize him. ‘What’s life all about? Tough decisions’.

 

Understanding the illness

It wasn’t until May when I spent a weekend caring for dad that the magnitude of his situation hit me. Until then I had always been the ‘cheer-er up-er’, bringing light into the gloom with stories of normal life. I’d help out while I was there, always cook a meal -try to give mum a moment of rest. But it was only a moment. I didn’t really lift the burden. And I was aware that they didn’t really want me to know the burden. On this particular weekend I offered to stay with dad so mum could go to the country with friends. I thought it’d be nice; I’d cook his meals, fetch his pills, we’d have lots of time to talk together, and all while making pictures. But it didn’t go that way. Dad wasn’t capable of more than short conversations between sleeps, meager mouthfuls of food and confused negotiations over pill schedules. I was surprised by my reaction. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know what stage he was at, but being solely responsible for his wellbeing shook me. So I decided to make more time for him. Neither he nor mum had ever actually asked me to, and I was just realizing how generous that was of them. But I wanted to be part of the struggle now. I couldn’t continue to pretend there wasn’t one. We wanted to record more conversations and the project motivated us to explore subjects that would’ve been easier to leave alone.

 

Space to focus

When the summer came and term ended, I felt at once glad that my schedule would clear, and anxious that I wouldn’t have John’s encouraging voice pushing me onwards. Of course my schedule didn’t clear, and life was as pressured as usual. I’d been postponing jobs so now had to juggle them with ‘dad-time’.  When you’re consumed by a poignant situation, it’s strange how everything else you encounter seems to relate to it. I found myself viewing my client jobs through ‘Dad Project spectacles’. The youthful hedonism of music festivals captured in the ’aspirational’ style required by Getty, felt even more trivial than ever. While fathers reading to their under-5s for the government’s SureStart scheme (promoting family reading) felt more important than ever. Although I never really managed to clear-the-decks, as I’d have liked to, I began to treat everything else as secondary. The Dad Project became my priority, my normal life worked around it, and it felt right.

 

When I met Leonie Purchase, earlier in the year, I’d asked her if I could offer some help in exchange for some wisdom. I knew being involved in her working process would refine my own. My timing was extremely fortunate as she was exhibiting ‘In The Shadow of Things’ at the end of the summer. This seemed like an ideal time to gain an understanding of her relationship to her work. Even with the deadline of her exhibition looming, she was thoughtful and attentive in her responses to The Dad Project. In comparison to Leonie’s photographs mine looked very controlled. They felt like ‘good photos’, but I worried they were ordinary. So although I was at a point where I really needed external input, I was more hesitant to show Leonie than I’d been with anyone else. I regarded her own work so highly that her feedback would obviously be very influential. When I did show her, she told me my photos were strong and touching, and this felt to me like a great validation. When I asked, what others pictures shall I look for (as I felt I was beginning to repeat myself) she said “try to photograph love”.

 

It’s easy to shoot without a conscious style when you’re on a purely personal mission, and I was some way into the Dad Project before I really considered the way my images spoke. I knew I wanted to make gentle, quiet photographs, and for their message to be open and un-self-conscious. When I tried to view my images objectively I thought, though they looked rather ‘safe’, they were at least honest. And I just hoped love was evident in all of them. I could see Leonie’s influence clearly in the next phase of my photos. Although I only spent a few days in her company, her support was hugely inspiring.

 

The end came into view

I was only just ‘finding my feet’ in the project, when dad’s death came into view. I still don’t know, and probably never will, whether this was the natural progression of my creative process or whether my ‘feet finding’ was a response to the immanent ending. I think both must’ve played a part, as well as the fact that I was working with Leonie at this time. Throughout the year I’d been trying to draw a map for the project, but as my emotions became more fragile it became my map. As The Dad Project got stronger, I got stronger. The more involved I became with dad, the more involved I became with the camera - and things became easier to do.

 

It wasn’t even two weeks before he died when I realized it was coming. And even then it wasn’t a thunderbolt - it just became apparent. I wondered how long dad had known it was around the corner. We talked a little about his funeral at this time. We wanted to know what he’d like to happen, but we also knew he didn’t want to have the conversation. He maintained his optimism until the end. When friends came to visit I think they knew they were saying goodbye, despite being met by dad’s brave and generous spirit. Now I started to wonder when optimism became denial.

 

One of the hardest moments for me came a few days before he died. It was his first day with the hospital bed in the living room. We’d managed to get him to the kitchen for dinner with the help of the wheelchair, especially as my Aunt was here from America. She knew she was coming to help him die, but he wanted to celebrate her visit as normal. When he sat down he cried and told us he was frightened. He was frightened of not knowing what was happening around him and he was worried about how mum would cope without him. We talked about ‘letting go’, something he’d been struggling with, very consciously, since the diagnosis. When we got him up to go back to bed, he fell. He lay flat on his back in his family kitchen for minutes before he could stand. The camera was part of this heart-breaking evening and nobody seemed to mind.

 

Death

At the instant of dad’s death my dual role felt absolutely concrete. There was no longer a separation. From deep inside in the cloud of tears provoked by his last breath, I wished everything could be captured; the sad and beautiful things my mum was saying; the stilted breathing of the people beside him, and the faces of the others aching in their separate spaces, the colour of his skin as it changed from my dad’s to a corpse’s. I wanted all the details recorded and revealed. This was the big unknown moment, one we will all have - one that nobody can envisage, but everybody wonders about. Ours was now, and it would be gone, but here was a chance share it in future. As we came out of our clouds, I felt resigned to the fact that documenting dad’s death was as instinctive to me as experiencing it. I was at once ashamed that I was thinking so objectively during the rawest moment of my life, and somehow proud that I was able to - that being the photographer so had become innate.

 

Productive grief

I have so much to share from the twelve weeks since dad died, but as it’s still too hazy to articulate, I hope my work speaks for me. What I’m presenting to you is a far better result than I would ever have imagined could come out of losing my wonderful dad. A small furry book isn’t much of a substitute for his presence, but the journey I’ve been on to make it has been my most inspiring yet. And, I’ve been on it with my dad – every day since he died. The Dad Project has put my heartache to such positive use.

 

There is of course a small but incredulous voice in the back of my head saying ‘don’t think you’re going to get away with it that lightly’. Occasionally I worry whether I’m postponing my grieving. But I’ve been so thoroughly ensconced in grief during this productive phase, that I can’t possibly be in denial. I feel sure that if everyone had an equivalent way to unravel their own bereavement, loss wouldn’t weigh so heavily on so many.

 

The emotive responses the project has provoked already have given me glimpses of the bigger the dialogues I was hoping to create. My dad was very concerned, both personally and professionally, with understanding other people’s positions, so if The Dad Project helps that occur on some level, I’ll feel I’ve done him proud.

 

The First Edit

I want this project to be so many things. At this stage it’s only one small representation of the whole picture, but it is a work in progress and I’m quite comfortable with that. The considered methodical phase of my project came after dad’s death, in the production phase. The process that has brought me to The First Edit book has been fraught with doubt, indecision, diversions and procrastinations. I explored many other strong ideas before settling on the book.

 

Firstly I must make use of the powerful film footage if have, so intend to make a film. But this was too big an undertaking at this stage in my grieving process. I’m not (yet) a filmmaker, and I wouldn’t like to into rush this highly skilled process. Just watching all my footage has been exhausting, so I will come back to this goal next year.

 

In order to keep the large number of concerned friends up to date with his situation dad wrote what became know as ‘the bile duct diaries’. This material would obviously best tell the story in his own voice. While this is important for me to do, I didn’t feel I could attempt it until I had begun to articulate my own story, in my own voice. The idea of an online memorial site would certainly be a very useful way to represent the multi-layered nature of The Dad Project (as various mediums are used to capture various perspectives), and it would present an opportunity for really interesting creative innovations. This is another thing I hope to tackle in the future, but, as I discovered when I attempted to describe the The First Edit phase on a blog, I’m not quite ready to upload my heart to the World Wide Web. But I’ll get there.

 

So, The Dad Project (first edit) is manifested in the simple form of a small book, as well as a DVD of six film clips selected from the overwhelming mass of material I have, and all contained within dad’s briefcase.

 

Potential audiences

I see three potential audiences for The Dad Project - the art market, the editorial market, and the ‘cancer market’. Each would require a very different rendition of the work. ‘The First Edit’ book as it stands, is really for private consumption. So to bring it to a wider audience my ultimate goal would be to get it published.  I’m not sure how long it will remain the most comfortable manifestation for me, but I hope to develop it into something suited to a gallery environment. While this would be an interesting, and I’m sure rewarding opportunity, I don’t want The Dad Project to remain solely in the Art World. The most important outcome of the project for me is that it speaks to people about their own loss. This, also being the best way I feel I can honor my dad, has to be my priority. If I dare make the assumption that the typical gallery audience is quite emotionally engaged and used to self-reflection, then those who are not - who could be most affected by the work - wouldn’t be seeing it here. For this reason I should try to get The Dad Project to wider media audiences.

 

I think the images, along with carefully constructed text, could be published in certain magazines or papers. I showed The First Edit to the photo editor of a national paper's sunday magazine and his response was very useful. While he was clearly impressed with the work, he said he found it so intimate that he wouldn’t recommend passing it up to his editor. He told me to be very wary of the editorial process within magazine production; that it is necessarily too rigid and dispassionate to treat such personal work with the care it deserves. This seems to me wise advice, so I will tread this path cautiously.

 

And lastly, but very significantly, there is a huge audience for cancer stories. I think this is an area that my work could be used very practically. Potentially as a tool to help people reflect on their own experiences of cancer in a prescribed way - as part of counseling sessions or in training staff. Or it could help to raise awareness of cancer, therefore contribute to fundraising for cancer charities and research. I intend to approach cancer charities and the hospice system about making my film. I understand they are well-funded organizations with great interests in exploring the psychological implications of cancer. The palliative care given to my dad by The Marie Curie hospice was an enormous help to our family and I would be very glad to use The Dad Project to promote their cause.

 

 

 

Endnotes

 

Thank you

All that remains to say is how glad I am that I was on the LCC MA course this year. Without John Easterby 's support, I probably wouldn’t have managed to do The Dad Project - and that’s an awful thought.

 

The following works have influenced The Dad Project in various ways.

 

Pedro Meyer – I Photograph to Remember (multimedia photography essay)

Ed Kashi – Living with Herbie (multimedia photography essay)

Leonie Purchase – In The Shadow of Things (body of photographic work)

Sally Mann – (body of photographic work)

Eugene Richards – Exploding Into Life (photographic book)

Teirney Gearon -The Mother Project (photographic book and film)

Barbara Rosenblum – I have begun the process of dying (written essay from Family Albums, Spence Jo, 1991, Virago Press)

Susan Sontag’s death photographed by Anne Leibovitz (general research on the subject)

 

In reflection on her own work, Sally Mann referenced an Emily Dickinson poem.

I found the poem and it seemed to express so beautifully something that David Modell (photographer & film maker) had said to me. I showed him footage from the moment after dad died and he told me that if we were editing it for broadcast we would cut it half way through. I was surprised that he thought it was too intimate and painful to show an audience. But it was an interesting perspective to consider as I worked on The First Edit.

 

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant 

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise 

As Lightning to the Children eased with explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind

 

Emily Dickinson