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INSPIRATION
“Mother and Father”: A Chronicle of Loss and Enduring Love
One of the most challenging subjects to photograph is human love.
Paddy Summerfield’s photobook, “Mother and Father,” is a poignant chronicle of the final years of his parents’ sixty-year marriage. The black-and-white images, taken in the beautiful, well-tended garden of their Oxford home and during family holidays in North Wales, span the period from 1997 to 2007. For a decade, he photographed his parents—their days filled with care, habits, rituals. The father tends the garden, the mother carefully gathers flowers. He prepares breakfast, she sets cups on the table. Always two, side by side.
And then—one.
“I recorded my mother’s loss of the world, my father’s loss of his wife, and ultimately, my loss of them both.”
Paddy Summerfield is a British photographer who has lived and worked in Oxford his entire life. Summerfield is renowned for his striking series of black-and-white images, captured on 35mm film. A graduate of the Photography and Cinematography department at Guildford School of Art, his works are held in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Arts Council, as well as numerous private collections.
Summerfield shared that he photographed his parents throughout his life. He would print them as collections and compile them into albums to give to his parents as Christmas gifts. But then a close friend advised him to transform the images into a photo essay.
He also wanted the photographs to truly narrate the story of his parents' relationship.
Summerfield shared that he photographed his parents throughout his life. He would print them as collections and compile them into albums to give to his parents as Christmas gifts. But then a close friend advised him to transform the images into a photo essay.
He also wanted the photographs to truly narrate the story of his parents' relationship.
“Each photograph individually doesn’t tell a story, but together they are the story,” Summerfield said.
“My father is in the garden, tending the land, growing flowers that my mother, trapped by illness, collects. And here I am, photographing them from the windows of our home.”
A Chronicle of Loss and Enduring Love
“Mother and Father” is a testament to the strength and unwavering devotion of a couple, and of a son dedicated to preserving their memory. It is Paddy’s tribute to his parents, a deeply moving chronicle of loss and enduring love.
“My photographs transformed their love and care for each other into something that will always live on.”
This book is a profoundly personal act of remembrance, and also a reminder of the power of a certain kind of photographic mindfulness that is becoming increasingly difficult to find in an era of image manipulation.
Nevertheless, “Mother and Father” is not just a personal story. It is a universal chronicle of memory, told through simple yet profound images.
The Guardian called the book “a visual poem about love, death, and memory.”
Nevertheless, “Mother and Father” is not just a personal story. It is a universal chronicle of memory, told through simple yet profound images.
The Guardian called the book “a visual poem about love, death, and memory.”
One of the most challenging subjects to photograph is human love.
The concluding images in the book are a triptych of absence: a white flower in pouring rain; an unkempt and overgrown garden, unrecognizable save for a table and two chairs; a tiny bird perched on the table, beside which stands a single chair.
Everything around grows and blooms: wildflowers and leaves, branches heavy with new foliage; life goes on, cruelly but beautifully.
As photographer and historian Gerry Badger notes in his afterword: “One of the hardest things to photograph is human love…” Summerfield did this deftly, movingly, allowing his ever-attentive photographer’s eye to bear witness to his love for his parents. A deeply sad and beautiful book.
“These are some of the most moving pictures I have ever seen.”
An Unyielding Desire to Remember
Award-winning filmmaker Richard Butchins and FullBleed founder Jude Edginton have produced a short documentary film, throughout which Summerfield discusses the experience of working on such a deeply personal and painful project, and why he persevered.
Having lived with his parents for most of his life, photojournalism gave Summerfield the opportunity to support them in their final years: first his mother’s Alzheimer’s, and then his father’s subsequent passing.
Having lived with his parents for most of his life, photojournalism gave Summerfield the opportunity to support them in their final years: first his mother’s Alzheimer’s, and then his father’s subsequent passing.
“I wanted to hold onto something that was slowly slipping away. Every day I obsessively approached the windows of the house and photographed my parents, collecting a huge archive,” he recounts.
The documentary, like the book itself, is imbued with a sense of sadness and loss, but also an unyielding desire to remember and to love.
The drive to prevent what was once familiar from disappearing transforms his book from a mere photograph of two people into a photograph that captures love itself.
HRONIKA: JOURNAL
STORIES THAT INSPIRE THE HRONIKA TEAM, ACCOUNTS OF PRODUCTS AND EVENTS FROM THE BRAND'S LIFE