‘John’s Notebooks’ is written in marker pen across one of the boxes I pull down from the attic. A photographer and writer, my father left behind an archive and boxes full of notebooks, letters, drawings, paintings and other objects that have been stored away since his death 15 years ago. It was on returning to live in my family home and rediscovering the archive and objects belonging to my father that the work started to be made. ‘John’s Notebooks’ explores the memories and emotions connected to the loss of my father that are stored in the landscape of my family home and surrounding area, in my family members who live here, and in the objects he left behind.
Engaging my father’s pictures alongside my own, ‘John’s Notebooks’ becomes a conversation between father and son around legacy, and as much about presence, as absence.
