It’s December the 23. 2018. Midnight. I’m standing in the bathroom of my parents house brushing my teeth. It felt like nothing had changed since my childhood. Everything as usual. I turn away from the sink to the bathtub. The same boiler, the same flagging, the same shower head. Since I can remember.
But suddenly something appears to be different. All at once, I perceive this situation differently. I turn around again. The green chair in the corner. Since always in the same place. Nothing extraordinary. But also here: All at once, this object so familiar with me appears interesting. What triggered this change in me?
I get my Mamiya 6, loaded with an expired Portra 400. Not the best film for interior shots in dim lighting conditions. Yet through the central shutter in the lens and the missing mirror of the rangefinder I manage to handhold 1/8s. What will the photos show me when they are developed?
In the next days I roam our house and the surrounding area. Searching unconsciously.
I’m successful: My parent’s bedroom. Here too – this standstill. The pictures on the wall, my mother’s alarm clock. Everything just as I saw it as a child.
My search continues. My father’s office. Entering the room is like a journey through time. The curtains, the beautiful mess, the electric typewriter that my father still uses from time to time. I notice that the desk has never been free. Since i can remember.
I find these places around our house, too. Places that remind me on my childhood. Because they have often changed little or not at all. Because they spark this feeling of familiarity in me.
The winter forest in which we played. The flood in front of our house or the tree into which we nailed our first tree house. Through photography I try to make this feeling tangible.
The finished images reflect these moments very well. The calm, the banal – but also: intimacy. What is left from growing up in your parents’ house? It seems to me that my parents’ house and the surroundings act as a mirror for myself, as a symbol for everything that has made us what we are now. Like a portal to my own adolescence.
23 Comments
Rock
February 4, 2020 at 11:09 amThanks for sharing Chris.Interesting post.
Chris
February 4, 2020 at 4:16 pmThanks man!
bwf
February 4, 2020 at 2:01 pmGreat article!
Chris
February 4, 2020 at 4:15 pmThanks!
Gil Aegerter
February 4, 2020 at 2:08 pmLovely essay. So important to be open to seeing the familiar with fresh eyes. Particularly like the image of your parents’ bedroom.
Chris
February 4, 2020 at 4:15 pmThanks very much! That ones also my favourite 😉
Roger B.
February 4, 2020 at 3:56 pmA fine article, Chris. Your kind of seeing and thinking stimulates my creative senses. We spend perhaps 95% of our lives in the same spaces, walking the same paths, seeing the same landscapes, the same interiors – so accepting the challenge to view them afresh is appreciated.
Chris
February 4, 2020 at 4:15 pmThanks a lot for your words and that it triggers something in you! You made a good point there.
Robert Bauder
February 4, 2020 at 5:16 pmBang! I like this photo-essay SO much that I am sad that I didn’t make one when my parents were alive. Congrats on such a successful use of expired color film AND hand-held slow shutter! This is very beautiful.
Chris
February 5, 2020 at 8:35 amWow! Thank you very much! This is touching me. And also I’m astounded myself by getting this slow shutter right 😀
Joe Van Cleave
February 5, 2020 at 2:26 amI’ve been similarly inspired by domestic settings, but here you’ve done great with capturing the melancholy of memories revisited. Well done.
Chris
February 5, 2020 at 8:35 amThanks for your kind words! 🙂
Ronald Vonk
February 5, 2020 at 9:30 amI rarely leave a reply even though I visit every day, but I just had too. I love your images. They turned out great and just ooze with all sorts of moodyness. They trigger memories for me too, but also remind me of reading Stephen King novels. Good work. Very inspiring!
Keep it up!
Ronald
Chris
February 5, 2020 at 10:07 amPuh! Thanks man! I don’t even know what to say. Other than I’m really happy that i could spark this feeling in you!
Thanks for your kind words! 🙂
Huss
February 5, 2020 at 9:04 pmI really like the interior shots, with their moodiness and melancholy. Even though they are created from life, it seems there is none there. Like memories.
Far out man.
Chris
February 6, 2020 at 8:35 amThanks man! I really appreciate it! Love the words you find for the images and how it makes you feel 🙂
Neil
February 6, 2020 at 1:04 pmGreat article – thought provoking.
Chris
February 6, 2020 at 2:56 pmThanks man! 🙂
Eugen Mezei
February 6, 2020 at 1:37 pmA subject has to tell something. If you need to explain, it is not in the photo.
These pictues may wake memories in you, but for the bystander they tell no story.
Hamish Gill
February 6, 2020 at 1:48 pmSorry but this is bullshit! Since when did image have to work without text?
This pretentious view of photography is tiresome and not welcome here!
Ian R
February 9, 2020 at 9:10 pmNice article and food for thought. Next time I visit Dad (we lost Mum in 2018) I’ll have some additional photos to shoot. Photos and memories the 2 are inextricable.
Chris
February 10, 2020 at 4:47 pmThanks man! Sorry for your loss. You’re so right. 🙂
Tim Hall
December 28, 2020 at 7:53 pmWell written. Steiglitz called his photographs “equivalents” because the outcome that the image conveyed is equivalent to what he felt at the time of the exposure. But, of course, you knew that.
‘