The One I Chose;
The One Who Chose Me
In early 2021 my wife was diagnosed with Colon Cancer. Through spring and summer, treatment had seemed to be progressing well, and she had been in good spirits until one morning in August, Friday 13th as it happens, she woke in more pain than usual. Tests at A&E indicated that the pain was caused by an infection that could be treated with antibiotics. Further tests revealed, however, that the infection had been caused by a sudden and rapid spread of the cancer. The following Friday, she died.
At the start of this project, five months after the death of my wife, I was consumed by grief; days and nights were spent under its heavy influence. Obsessed with how it ‘worked’, I felt that if I were to make any photography at all, it would have to be about this. “How do you free yourself from an obsession, when you are a photographer” asks Jean Mohr, “if not by photographing the object of that obsession?” (Berger and Mohr, 1989)
In this project, ‘The One I Chose; The One Who Chose Me’, I embarked on a journey to understand my grief by talking to others about theirs. The project’s title is intended to call out that our partners are not someone we are given by birth or relation, they are the person we choose, and they choose us in return. The project’s subjects therefore are all widows and widowers who lost their spouses before the age of 50.
Steve. 3 Months In.
When Steve and I met, we were both relatively new to grief; his wife died just three months after mine.
We discussed the challenges of taking on the role of sole homemaker, finding that drinking wine alone in the evening doesn’t generally help with our mood, but regular exercise does.
We also talked about the comfort we had in talking to other widowers and that social situations with couples can amplify our feelings of isolation and disconnectedness.
This portrait places Steve in the kitchen; the dry-wipe board on the wall behind surrounds him with green; a colour typically used in cinema to depict alien worlds. It reflects our conversation about having to take on the parts of life that had previously been the purview of our spouse.
All relationships work by dividing up the things that need to be done as a team. When you lose your teammate, replacing them can be difficult when they seemed to fulfil their roles so naturally and intuitively.
Gary. 7 Months In.
This portrait was taken on London’s Embankment, where Gary and his wife met for their first date.
Sunflowers have been a recurring theme in my conversations during this project and were used on top of Gary’s wife’s coffin. He bought some from the flower stand in memory of her and as a nod to the other widows in this project to whom they have been a touch point.
Much of our conversation was about struggling to find a new identity without our partner and switching from being Dad to trying to be Mum. Of having gotten used to presenting a joint persona to the world when married and now being unsure of who we are now that we are alone.
Opposite Embankment Station this phone box reminded me of the motif of a superhero changing from one persona to another. We might hope to emerge from this challenge as heroes ready to take on the world again. Time has imposed scars and weathering on the phone box which mirror those we wear ourselves as we come to terms with our grief.
Emma. 2 Years In.
Emma’s husband died of Covid before any of us really understood how serious things would get. He came down with a temperature and some days later, in the early hours of Emma’s birthday, was taken to the hospital whilst Emma and her daughter stayed at home.
Like many others in 2020, she saw his health decline and ultimately said goodbye, three weeks later, over Skype.
We talked about the loss of innocence experienced by children because of the death of a parent. The difficulty of telling our child that their parent is going to die and the oddly pragmatic way our two happen to have dealt with it. Our daughters are the same age.
Two years in Emma feels able to move the house around and it’s helping her feel that she’s more in control of her life. There are still moments when grief is overwhelming.
Emma is pictured holding balloons left over from her delayed 40th birthday party. Their tired deflated nature seemed a perfect metaphor for how grief can make us feel, even on happy occasions.
Susan Cain’s book ‘Bittersweet’ explores, among other things, how we might transform pain into creativity. In it, she repeatedly comes back to the mantra, “Whatever pain you cannot get rid of, make it your creative offering.” (Cain, 2022)
It is not unusual for artists to explore dark times through their practice: Illustrator Gary Andrews documented his widowhood by continuing his routine of creating a sketch each evening that summed up the day. Posted to Twitter for his friends and family, the pictures eventually became the best-selling book ‘Finding Joy’. Countless authors have turned to their writing in times of grief. Some take an autobiographical approach, like Joan Didion in ‘The Year of Magical Thinking’, whereas others have published fragmented collections of notes like Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche with ‘Notes On Grief’. Even beyond the arts, mathematician Michael Frame used fractal geometry to create a view of grief “made of ever smaller nested losses”. (Frame, 2021)
At times like these, it seems we turn to what we know - drawing, writing, or even mathematics - to explore and explain the depth of loss we feel, to make sense of it for ourselves, and describe it to others. I, naturally, turned to photography.
Terry. 7 Months In.
Bringing up three children, one of whom requires near constant assistance, meant that Terry’s life wasn’t simple even before his wife died.
Me and many of the widowers I have spoken to had made sure there was financial coverage if we were to die and leave our wives alone. It didn’t occur to us that things might end up the other way round.
Dealing with physically disabled and neuro-diverse children brings more significant challenges to overcome whilst grieving than I have had to grapple with. It highlights that grief is rarely suffered in isolation; other life challenges don’t stop.
Terry described grief as not coming so much in waves - a term often coined - but in tides. It’s a slower but more sustained drift between being ‘nearly ok’ or ‘sad and heartbroken.
Getting some live-in help has relieved some of the day-to-day pressure, but Terry feels that the gift his wife’s death has given him is a more authentic purpose: the care and upbringing of his children.
Caroline. 2 1/2 Years In.
Caroline’s upstairs window looks out over the churchyard where her husband is buried. You can see the grave from here.
This closeness goes some way to keeping his memory alive for her children. Her son remembers a little, but her daughter is too young for ‘daddy’ to be anything other than a figure from their photo books. They pass him every day on the way to school.
We talked about the broader range of losses experienced when your spouse dies: time, career, and a sense of doing little else than simply surviving the day. For us both, it is our kid’s routine that drives the day which means that, often, other things don’t get done. We shared the frustration of nothing ever being as complete as we would like it to be.
Caroline and her children’s shared grief has not been easy. Her son is very angry about his father’s death. Lock-down and the isolation it brought allowed for a more focused educational experience but reduced the ability to get face-to-face counselling and support
Celine Marchbank [Tulip] and Briony Campbell [The Dad Project] created poignant diaristic projects chronicling the gradual passing of a loved one - a parent in both their cases. Throughout my wife’s illness, I had done the same: documenting the quotidian moments of hospital visits and medical paraphernalia that punctuated our lives. Like Marchbank, I had struggled with whether I should be taking photographs of that time. “Why had I introduced a camera to this dreadful situation?” Marchbank asks herself in the forward to her book, before resolving her quandary by concluding that “The camera allowed me just a couple of split seconds a day to record the things that would go on to mean so much to me, the little things that would be gone.” (Marchbank, 2016)
As Gary Andrews had done with his sketches, and Marchbank and Campbell had done with their photography, I considered continuing with my photographic diary. However, as time passed, I realised I didn’t want to narrate; I wanted to explore.
In the months leading up to the start of this project, I seemed to be in a state of endless shock and heartbreak, but as time passed, I would notice a day here and there where I would feel less broken. I didn’t expect grief to be a linear progression from abject sadness into a new way of being, but I also didn’t expect it to be so sporadic. Something I later found also troubled Barthes:
“What I find utterly terrifying is mourning’s discontinuous character”, he bemoaned in the months after the death of his mother. (Barthes, Howard and Léger, 2012, p.67),
Rhiannon. 3 Years In.
It was Rhiannon’s story about meeting another widow further down the road than her whilst on vacation that was the partial inspiration for this project.
Many of the widows and widowers I have met on this journey have children and it is the parenting routine that has got them up every day and pushed them through the challenges of the early months of their grief. Rhiannon does not have kids, and said she couldn’t imagine having to go through grief whilst also holding it together enough to look after another human being.
What has become apparent, through our many conversations, is that finding a small tribe of other widows or widowers that you can relate to is of immense importance throughout grief; particularly in the early weeks and months. Two people won’t necessarily connect just because they are widowed, and no one’s journey is the same, but being able to have someone there who gets it when things seem very low and very dark can become a steadying hand.
Sam. 3 Years In.
Sam met Rhiannon (above) when their husbands were both dying in the same hospice.
She feels that a person’s experience of grief is tightly related to how their partner died, how much time they had together when they knew what was going to happen.
Sam’s daughter is too young to remember her Dad but he has left memories for her.
Although it was a difficult time she feels that he was there to support her through the beginning of her grief while he died.
While chatting at her home over some cups of tea we talked about the quirk of not really believing in reincarnation and yet still finding comfort in the presence of a particular creature. For me, it’s robins, for Sam it is wasps.
Sam is pictured in the field where her husband’s ashes are scattered. She walks the dog there most days, alone or with her daughter and new partner. Ben’s ashes are scattered at the foot of an otherwise ordinary tree. It’s a quiet place where they have held picnics and celebrations at key moments to remember Ben.
Bercu. 3 Years In.
When I met Burcu at her home I sat for lunch with her daughter, new partner and a family friend. Although we had only chatted briefly via Messenger we were quickly talking like old friends.
We talked about the fear of forgetting, and the craving for companionship and physical intimacy during early grief vs. the odd expectation that maybe the world wouldn’t find that kind of thing acceptable for at least a year.
She talked of being with the grief, of sitting with it, holding space for it when it’s there so as to integrate it into our lives under our own terms. To move forward in life in any way does not mean we are over our grief, just that we are building new things around it.
For me, this photo really sums up our encounter. Bercu is laying in the sun, being with the moment. I wanted the sun to light her face, and this could only work if she was in this position. The construction of the image, then, aligns with the need to adapt when we cannot force the world to be how we might want it.
From the outset, I knew that I wanted to portray grief rather than death and found that the topic of widowhood is rarely discussed in photographic dialogue. Although a stoic widower was included in August Sander’s ‘Face Of Our Time’ in 1929, a search of the BJP’s archive surprisingly showed no contemporary projects looking at the lives of widow(er)s in Western culture, which is odd given photography’s unique nature to reflect the sensations of grief.
Grief is the aftermath of death, and David Campany argues that in the age of the moving image, the aftermath is where photography often sits. (Campany, 2012, p.44). As well as lending itself to the aftermath, photography’s sense of detachment from linear time aligns it with the sense of disconnection felt by those experiencing grief.
Sander, A. (1929). Widower with Sons, Cologne.
In the forward to Denise Riley’s book ‘Time Lived Without its Flow’, Max Porter writes that “the [essay’s] subject is not death, but arrested time. Riley’s project is to describe and interrogate that acute sensation of being cut off from any temporal flow.”(Porter, 2019. Emphasis added).
Riley’s descriptions of the feeling of temporal displacement caused by her grief align with Damien Sutton’s view of photography and its ability to inherently convey such altered conditions of time. In ‘Photography, Cinema, Memory’ he says, "While we are aware of an objective measurement of time and space, a sudden shift or a kind of transience can cause discomfort - time and space seem to bend or unfold. This is the same effect created by the photograph and the way it seems dislocated from the whole of time and space, only this is achieved through stasis or slowness.” (Sutton, 2009, p.49)
Sutton’s thoughts on how photographs can portray an existence out of time - “a dislocation” - echo Riley’s feelings on how grief is felt as a lived experience, “an altered condition of life.” (Riley, 2019)
By being diaristic, Marchbank, Campbell, and even Andrews’ projects are more akin to the flow of time implied by the moving image. They document the fact and show a story but do not convey the feeling. My project, therefore, is intentionally not a linear story. In the portraits I have made the subjects are pictured “cut off from space and time” (Metz, 1985) “inside a private non-time of pure stasis.” (Riley, 2019)
James. 4 Years In.
James happens to have known my wife as she’d been part of the cancer support group that had helped him when his wife was ill.
We visited a few places that hold key memories for James of the times spent with his wife, Sarah. From where they had their wedding photos taken to the meadow where her ashes are interred. We talked a lot about how these places can be important to come to; to be in and reflect in; to remember.
We also talked about the griefs of others. James remarked on the meadow’s profound effect on Sarah’s father when he visited it. In Dave Grohl’s book ‘The Storyteller’ James found quite a resonance with the feelings described relating to the death of Kurt Cobain. The book made James realise that although he’d lost his wife, its impact on her friends may be much more similar than he first assumed.
The bench James is pictured with is one that he and his wife used to sit on to eat fish and chips whilst looking out over the Surrey Hills. The plaque reads, “I told you I was ill”.
Sunita. 4 Years In.
Although it has been over four years since her husband died, Sunita still has those moments where she hears her husband’s key in the door or catches herself hunting for his face amongst a crowd.
We met and talked in the serenely peaceful grounds of a Buddhist temple in South West London. It is a place Sunita came to as a child and with her husband and family once they married. Their faith was important to him but her attitude toward those beliefs have changed since he died.
During our conversation, we discussed how our losses had changed us and how we now did things we would not have done before. Not always to be more like our lost spouse, but because priorities have changed and we feel a need and strength to speak out for others and connect more actively to the world
Adam. 5 Years In.
I met Adam at his home where he now lives with his new partner, Emma, who is also a widow.
Meditation had been a big part of Adam’s life even before his partner died. Not long after her death, he went on a week-long, silent retreat.
Having noticed that I deal with my grief in moments around the rest of life’s busy routines, I found it interesting to consider the possibility of dealing with grief without being able
to distract my mind with day-to-day tasks. To have to sit with it and contemplate it for a week in silence, to me, seemed an overwhelming prospect, but Adam felt it may have helped him move through the process, or come to terms with it, quicker.
It is not obvious to the viewer but this photo was taken with a very long exposure of about 30 seconds. I wanted to capture the stillness and calmness of the environment and of the moment. To instil within the image the sense of time or indeed a dislocation from time.
I had bought Harry Borden’s book ‘Single Dad’ early on in the MA when looking at my photography from a father's perspective. A year later, I was now viewing it from the standpoint of a widower. Borden’s simple portraits are unencumbered by prominent photographic technology, and each is accompanied by a paragraph or two from the sitter. I liked the simplicity of presentation and the authentic nature of the stories conveyed.
Mahtab Hussain’s project ‘You Get Me’ walks a similar path. Looking to create a nuanced view of Asian men in Britain, he sought out strangers to include in the project that he hoped would collectively show a side of his community that ran counter to general public perception. Crucially he didn’t shoot them in a studio, and conversations with the subjects were an essential element of his photographic process.
“In order to make the work I had to engage in conversation, which was part of the process of gaining trust in order to make the portraits. I really enjoyed these exchanges… ..it is difficult to define a person by their portraits alone. It is an impossible task. However, my intention was not to collect individual portraits, but to build a body of work that represents the community through a collective narrative.” (Hussain, 2017)
Hussain’s situation was very similar to mine. He wasn’t coming at the subject as an observer as Borden had done. He was instead part of the community, and the project was as much about showing that community to those outside as it was a way for him to understand his place within it. Like him, I set out to meet with, talk to and take portraits of the community I was now a part of.
Claire. 6 Years In.
I met Claire and talked whilst on a walk with Oscar, her dog.
Oscar had been a great help in getting out of the house in the early days of her grief, walking around the park, and crying in the rain. We talked about how we try to keep those old rhythms of the day going; they get us up in the morning and help us through, althoughthey feel different as part of our new existence.
Claire talked about wedding vows. How when we say ’’Til Death Do Us Part’ we never think it’ll apply to us, it’s just a tradition that people say. It’s a shock to consider that those vows are now broken; ended; and yet we seek to keep that relationship going.
In this photo, Claire is seated on a meditative bench in the park. The words “pause” and “breathe” can just be seen as a reminder to be present in our emotions.
Benches have become a recurring theme in this project. Often marked as memorials they invite us to sit and contemplate, yet there is a sense of loneliness when they are just occupied by one person.
From the beginning of this project I have wanted to use the images and accompanying stories to foster discussion about the topic they represent. Whilst I have entered the work into a number of competitions, it is through online sharing, community exhibition and presentation that the work has had its greatest impact.
I have recieved instant reactions to the portraits as I made them, on a dedicated instragram account, and this feedback has allowed me to understand the effectiveness of the work in speaking for the shared experiences of the widow community. This fed into the planning and layout of the first exhbition.
In May 2022, portraits and still-life images from the project were exhibited at St. Martin’s Community Centre in Birmingham as part of an event hosted by the charity Widowed And Young. Stephanie Patrick, CEO of WAY, said this of the exhibition:
"Richard has produced a powerful set of images about the unique loss experienced by young widows… ..The collection reveals the social isolation experienced by young widows, it propels us to consider the challenges faced by each individual and invites us to take a deeper look at the importance of talking about death in a frank and open manner". (Patrick, 2022)
Due to limited space I displayed the work without accompanying stories, but it became clear through my conversations with attendees that whilst viewers take a lot from the images, and make their own reading, the stories accompanying the photos are as important as the images themselves.
I was able to retell those stories in person, but I now believe that, much like publsihing online, text should accompany the images when exhibited and, In fact, may be stronger for it. ’In the relation between a photograph and words, the photograph begs for an interpretation, and the words usually supply it. The photograph irrefutable as evidence but weak in meaning is given meaning by the words… ..Together the two then become powerful; an open question appears to have been fully answered.” (Berger and Mohr, 1989)
Mahtab Hussain also wrestled with the use of text for his work. “I wanted to position the work as fine-art portraiture. I felt if I included their voices it would start to position the work as documentary. I realize now how important it was to include these statements: it helped inform the work but also empowered the community, by retaking control of their narrative.”. As Campany says, the inclusion of text made Hussain’s project “a rich and complex combination of images and words.”; “The portraits certainly become much richer when seen in the light of the various voices in the book.” (Campany and Hussain, 2017)
Jo. 7 Years In.
Many of the widows I have met on this project knew, even if for a short time, that their spouse was going to die. Jo’s husband died suddenly as a result of the carelessness of someone else. It could have been prevented; there was no goodbye. He went out for acycle ride and never came back.
Jo was the third person I’ve spoken to within this project who talked about being married and having a shared identity. That as a couple, when you lose your literal other half, it’s like you’ve been in a band but now have to make that problematic first solo album. Analbum that no one really cares about because they liked the band you were in. You liked the band you were in!
Building a new identity can be a mix of old and new. Sometimes incorporating that other person into yourself because you learnt from them, loved that about them and want them to still have an impact on the world. Sometimes parts of the new solo project can be a rebellion against the old ethos, like getting tattoos or buying cats.
Kirsty. 9 Years In.
It was whilst working at The Natural History Museum that Kirsty and her husband first met. By all accounts, he had first realised he loved her when, at the end of a working day, he saw her taking down her hair as she walked along this corridor.
Kirsty and I talked about her loss as well as the parallel challenges of bringing up teenagers in the 21st Century. Grief is not something that occurs in isolation but it can, at times, help us put other challenges into perspective - the worst seems to have already happened - but there is distinct loneliness to not having someone to share those challenges with.
Kirsty is still affected by the death of her husband and yet said she feels happy with the life she has made for herself and her children.
Taking down her hair was a simple act that spurred on their love, yet this re- enactment brings a sense of sorrow, a loss of who they once were together.
The green bag is a symbol of the grief we carry, it can be cumbersome and awkward at times
Andrews, G. (2021). Finding Joy. Hodder & Stoughton.
Barthes, R. (2020). Camera lucida. London: Vintage Classics.
Barthes, R., Howard, R. and Léger, N. (2012). Mourning diary : October 26, 1977-September 15, 1979. New York: Farrar, Straus, And Giroux, p.67.
Berger, J. and Mohr, J. (1989). Another way of telling. Cambridge: Granta Books.
BJP (2015). Jenny Lewis: One Day Young - 1854 Photography. [online] www.1854.photography. Available at: https://www.1854.photography/2015/03/jenny-lewis-one-day-young/ [Accessed 20 Jul. 2022].
Borden, H. (2021). Single Dad. London: Hoxton Mini Press.
Cain, S. (2022). Bittersweet : how sorrow and longing make us whole. London: Penguin Books.
Campany, D. (2012). Photography and Cinema. London: Reaktion, p.44.
Campany, D. and Hussain, M. (2017). You Get Me? [online] Aperture. Available at: https://aperture.org/editorial/mahtab-hussain/ [Accessed ].
Campbell, B. (2013). The Dad Project. [online] Available at: http://www.brionycampbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The_Dad_Project_Briony_Campbell.pdf.
Campbell, B. (n.d.). The Dad Project - Briony Campbell | Photography & Film. [online] www.brionycampbell.com. Available at: http://www.brionycampbell.com/projects/the-dad-project/?overview.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2021). Notes on Grief. London: 4Th Estate.
Didion, J. (2012). The Year of Magical Thinking. London Fourth Estate.
Frame, M. (2021). The Geometry of Grief : Reflections on Mathematics, Loss, and Life. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.
Higgins, J. (2013). Why it does not have to be in focus. Modern photography explained. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd, p.114.
Hussain, M. (2017). You Get Me? London: Mack.
Marchbank, C. (2016). Tulip. Stockport: Dewi Lewis Publishing.
Marchbank, C. (2021). Celine Marchbank – My Mother. [online] The Loss Project CIC. Available at: https://www.thelossproject.com/post/celine-marchbank-my-mother [Accessed 28 Jul. 2022].
Metz, C. (1985). Photography and Fetish. October, [online] pp.81–90. Available at: https://ia801604.us.archive.org/35/items/Metz_Christian_Photography_and_Fetish/Metz_Christian_Photography_and_Fetish.pdf.
Patrick, S (2022) Personal email to author.
Porter, M. (2019). Time lived, without its flow. London: Picador.
Riley, D. (2019). Time lived, without its flow. London: Picador.
Sutton, D. (2009). Photography, cinema, memory the crystal image of time. Minneapolis, Minn. University Of Minnesota Press, p.49
References
Additional Reading
During this project I have read many books on death, grief, and associated themes such as loss and melancoly. Not all have been explicitly referenced in this review. For the benefit of those who are interested in following the same literary journey the full list of ‘grief’ books consumed during this project is included here.
Andrews, G. (2021). Finding Joy. Hodder & Stoughton.
Barnes, J. (2014). Levels of life. London: Vintage Books.
Barthes, R. and Howard, R. (2020). Camera lucida. London: Vintage Classics.
Barthes, R., Howard, R. and Léger, N. (2012). Mourning diary : October 26, 1977-September 15, 1979. New York: Farrar, Straus, And Giroux, p.67.
Borden, H. (2021). Single Dad. London: Hoxton Mini Press.
Cain, S. (2022). Bittersweet : how sorrow and longing make us whole. London: Penguin Books.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2021). Notes on Grief. London: 4Th Estate.
Devine, M. (2021). How to carry what can’t be fixed : a journal for grief. Boulder, Colorado: Sounds True.
Didion, J. (2012). The Year of Magical Thinking. London Fourth Estate.
Frame, M. (2021). The Geometry of Grief : Reflections on Mathematics, Loss, and Life. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.
Golightly, A. (2017). Being Adam Golightly : a true account of grief observed through laughter, love and grit. London: Short Books.
Jacky Bowring (2008). A field guide to melancholy. Harpenden: Oldcastle.
Kym, M. (2018). Gone : a girl, a violin, a life unstrung. New York: Crown.
Najwa Zebian (2021). Book Of Healing. S.L.: Andrews Mcmeel.
Reverend Richard Coles (2021). Madness Of Grief. S.L.: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Riley, D. (2019). Time lived, without its flow. London: Picador.
Sogyal, R., Gaffney, P. and Harvey, A. (2008). The Tibetan book of living and dying. London: Rider.