“Mum, will you shoot me?”
It was two days before my 19-yr-old daughter was due to board a plane and move to England. She’s been thinking about it for a few months, and just two weeks earlier had announced she’d bought the ticket and was looking for a flat in Bristol. And I knew she was leaving… but of course I wasn’t ready and was dreading the day I’d take her to the airport. This was too quick, too soon.
We’d been so close, especially during the past two years since her dad moved out and it was just the two of us in our flat, perched 3000 ft up a mountain just outside Innsbruck. We’d been there 7 years, but now she wanted to move on, see the world, find her path. She was ready for it.
She always liked a photoshoot, ever since I did the first one with her and her best friends: three 15-year-olds turned models for a day, which completely changed their perception of themselves overnight. Their lives were never the same again, and I realised then how powerful the impact of a portrait can be.
“Sure! Where? What do you want to do?”
January weather those days was 15 below zero, not exactly shooting outdoors time.
She was training for Taekwondo and wanted to do some jumping shots, so we finally settled on the railway station underground parking. We like urban, and it’s warmer than the street. Next day, off we go.
She jumps and jumps and handstands and jumps some more, it’s fun and we laugh a lot. Man I’m going to miss her, but I’m not showing it. I’m sticking to this moment, enjoying it to the full. This is our fun time.
In the parking lot there’s the entrance to a glam hotel: a long corridor with lights all the way down, and we decide to shoot in there. She jumps to touch the ceiling a few times, then she turns away from me and starts walking down the corridor. She looks over her shoulder and says "Mum… I’m going."
I click. It feels like a brick hit me but I take the photograph.
We wrap it up and drive home. I download the card but I don’t look, I can’t just yet.
Next day I drive her to the airport and of course I cry all the way home. I’m so happy for her and yet it’s the saddest thing, to get back to the empty flat and know she won’t be there for dinner.
Glass of wine. And our cat Gandalf, bless him, he cuddles me all night.
In the morning I pull myself together and look at the photos. I laugh remembering the jokes, I cry a bit, I love what we did. A ton of bad ones, some great ones.
And then I come to that one.
And I see what it really is, and I understand why she needed this.
That was the way she wanted my blessing on her leaving home.
And I realised that she needed to see herself leave through my eyes.
That photo packs so much emotion, I’m surprised it doesn’t walk off the wall by itself sometimes. It’s captured a milestone in our lives, a marker for a time and a passage we’ve come through and survived.
And more than just recording a moment in time, it holds our relationship back up to us as a permanent expression of our love for each other.
The power of a print.
We’d been so close, especially during the past two years since her dad moved out and it was just the two of us in our flat, perched 3000 ft up a mountain just outside Innsbruck. We’d been there 7 years, but now she wanted to move on, see the world, find her path. She was ready for it.
She always liked a photoshoot, ever since I did the first one with her and her best friends: three 15-year-olds turned models for a day, which completely changed their perception of themselves overnight. Their lives were never the same again, and I realised then how powerful the impact of a portrait can be.
“Sure! Where? What do you want to do?”
January weather those days was 15 below zero, not exactly shooting outdoors time.
She was training for Taekwondo and wanted to do some jumping shots, so we finally settled on the railway station underground parking. We like urban, and it’s warmer than the street. Next day, off we go.
She jumps and jumps and handstands and jumps some more, it’s fun and we laugh a lot. Man I’m going to miss her, but I’m not showing it. I’m sticking to this moment, enjoying it to the full. This is our fun time.
In the parking lot there’s the entrance to a glam hotel: a long corridor with lights all the way down, and we decide to shoot in there. She jumps to touch the ceiling a few times, then she turns away from me and starts walking down the corridor. She looks over her shoulder and says "Mum… I’m going."
I click. It feels like a brick hit me but I take the photograph.
We wrap it up and drive home. I download the card but I don’t look, I can’t just yet.
Next day I drive her to the airport and of course I cry all the way home. I’m so happy for her and yet it’s the saddest thing, to get back to the empty flat and know she won’t be there for dinner.
Glass of wine. And our cat Gandalf, bless him, he cuddles me all night.
In the morning I pull myself together and look at the photos. I laugh remembering the jokes, I cry a bit, I love what we did. A ton of bad ones, some great ones.
And then I come to that one.
And I see what it really is, and I understand why she needed this.
That was the way she wanted my blessing on her leaving home.
And I realised that she needed to see herself leave through my eyes.
That photo packs so much emotion, I’m surprised it doesn’t walk off the wall by itself sometimes. It’s captured a milestone in our lives, a marker for a time and a passage we’ve come through and survived.
And more than just recording a moment in time, it holds our relationship back up to us as a permanent expression of our love for each other.
The power of a print.