Legacies

Legacies

The voices you hear in the film Legacies are mine, my mother’s, and my aunt’s.  Following the death of my father in March 2020, the sisters live together in my mother’s house, each navigating their own losses and illnesses.  They participate gladly in the recordings and photography; I casually operate the camera with one hand as we go about our daily life, when practicable. 

There is respite in the woods from the sadness of this situation.  With my camera I find calm in the eye of the storm, patterns in the chaos, metaphors to understand the processes of time, loss, and the tangling of brains. I’m also drawn to the darkness of it, to the shadows, to the strange mythical characters, creatures and metamorphoses my imagination conjures up when I look at the trees.

The woods, like our lives, are full of legacies.  Through networks of roots, fungus, and decay, living and dead trees connect past, present, future.  Likewise, in human experience, invisible legacies stretch out and reach forward from past generations to the present and beyond.  Some of them are frightening, like a family history of dementia; others bring creativity, continuity, renewal.  

The music for this film was composed by Martin Kennedy in the light of our runs through the woods, our exchanging of thoughts on life and loss, our daft stories about the trees.  He looked at my images as he composed; in my turn, I revisited the woods with my camera, listening to his music.  The piece evolved like a dialogue, and the sequence of image, music and speech was built.  

Martin’s music expresses something that the photography cannot. Our joint work aims to draw out the parallels between human experience and what we see in the woods; to echo the words of Mervyn Peake:

“Some laugh; some mourn;

With people, so with trees.”

Click here to view it on Vimeo.

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