This collection of photographs is a tribute to Dominic, one of my three siblings, who died in September 2022.
Each photograph represents some aspect of my childhood relationship with Dominic.
Click on any of the images to view it full-screen, and use the arrows to navigate from one photograph to the next.
Lemon Tree, Oh So Pretty...
Dominic had West Indian heritage. Our parents bought him an LP record of Calypso songs (and another of steel drum music) to bring a bit of Caribbean spirit into the home. The song "Lemon Tree" was a favourite song from that album: "Lemon tree, oh so pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet, but the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat."
The leaves in this photograph come from a lemon tree my garden (though not the lemon)
Black Beauty
Dominic loved horses, horse riding, and adored the Black Beauty television series. This set of four horseshoes, which come from my uncle-in-law's farm in Central Spain, represent this love of his, and the horse memorabilia he collected when young.
Four also reflects the fact that we were four siblings.
Fryer Duck
With a surname like Fryer, and the fact that our father was an Anglican vicar, it was inevitable that as children we would be called Friar Tuck, of Robin Hood fame. Indeed, Nottingham is not far from where we grew up. Dominic was called probably called Friar Tuck more than the rest of us, and this rubber duck seems a perfect way to recall that, reflecting also Dom's sharp and sometimes mischievous sense of humour.
Beyond the Shore
Dominic was at home in the sea. Long after the rest of us had retreated to the warmth of a towel with blue lips, he would continue rolling around in the water. He loved swimming. This photograph was taken in Brighton, South England, an area that our paternal family is from and that we visited from time to time as children. This photograph has an element of the liminal; the threshold between the here and now and the beyond.
Over the Boundary
Dom was a natural at cricket, and we had many a good cricketing tussle in the garden and on school sports fields. He had terrific eyesight and strength, meaning he could bowl fast with little effort, or send the ball flying high and far with the bat, making it look like child's play.
As a West Indies fan in the 1980s, he loved always being on the winning side, in contrast to me, his younger brother, all too frequently drowning his sorrows after yet another miserable England performance.
Requiescat in Pace
This bouquet was sent to me by my employer following Dominic's death. I could not bring myself to remove them once they were past their best and one year on, dried out, they looked magnificent, as seen here. I experimented in photographing them in a number of ways. This image, using the technique of light painting with a long exposure was the result, and served as inspiration for the whole series of photographs, using the same technique for each one.
The title of the photograph is a nod to the fact that we grew up in a vicarage.