In Australia’s Bicentenary, our daughter Louise was born. This photo is a cute baby snap from very early in her life. I don’t think new babies express their inner states on their faces very well. Discomfort is well expressed by a cry, but apart from that their face muscles seem to contract and relax fairly randomly as they work on developing control over their bodies. It seems to me that they start with their eyes and work their way outwards.
Baby photography is especially hard when babies are only a few weeks old. It demands a combination of patience, luck and timing. First you ensure that the baby is rested, fed and in a dry nappy in a comfortable environment. Then you watch and wait for the random facial exercises to work their way through grimaces, snarls, lip curls and dopy looks, to finally flash a smile. After a few short weeks, that smile will become more and more intentional in response to eye contact with other loving faces.
This is a simple family photo but it is highly significant to our mob. On the surface, it is one of those family records that you take because of the event. After Louise’s birth, her grandparents came to visit and we took the photo of the grandparents with the newborn, as you do.
But it turns out that this is the last photo I ever took of my father. It was taken in March 1988, soon after Louise’s birth. Dad died a bit over a year later, in May 1989. The 1989 collection includes photos of the family gathering after his funeral. In the 14 months between, I took no photos of Dad.
You seldom take a photo with the knowledge that it will be the last one you ever take of that person. And yet, for sure and certain, one day that will be true of every person you photograph. Either your death or theirs will end the photo opportunities. The special nature of that final photo is usually revealed in retrospect, seldom in prospect.
I mentioned earlier about taking the photo of record with the baby and my grandmother, the children’s great-grandmother. She lived on long after that early effort, but somewhere in my collection is the last photo I ever took of her. It comes around.
It makes me think about mortality but I don’t wander off into platitudes about living each day as if it were your last. I just approach the whole area with a sense of wonder and with a desire to appreciate the potential for long-term value – perhaps quite surprisingly so – of a mundane decision to take a photo of another human being. It may be a parent, partner, family, friend or a complete stranger, but perhaps the passage of time will give that photo a greater significance.
And so my Dad leaves the photo chain as Louise enters it. There are other photos of him in my collection that I have not published here.
Before I leave 1988, I must include this photo of Rachel on a swing. It’s a different way to capture the scale of the landscape around Albany. Landscapes often gain their sense of scale in panoramic presentations; in this photo, the vertical format works. We were at a friend’s place high on a hill. A rope swing hung from the branch of a karri tree, probably 15 or 20 metres up. I saw the possibility of the photograph and used a 200mm lens to stand back and take the photo from a distance. I loved the way the swing seemed to move in the photo. I had the slide printed at about A2 size and it hung on our wall for years.