This body of work uses photography to explore issues including mental health, long-term care giving, social media use and self-worth. Creating this work has allowed me to explore thoughts and feelings I usually choose not to interact with.
My father has long-term and complex medical issues, and for the last twenty years I have helped my mother care for him. She has also suffered from serious ill-health in this time. To many it may seem that I am just a middle-aged man living with his parents, as the role of carer is a largely unseen one, and certainly undervalued by society.
“Fragments of John Harper” is at first glance an autobiographical work by John Harper detailing his family life, and happy marriage. In truth John Harper does not exist. The account is a fictive reimagining of how the last twenty years of my life might have been if my father had not been unwell. I chose his name as Harper because that is my maternal grandmother’s maiden name, and John is my father’s first name.
John Harper is not an alter-ego. I cannot become him by putting on a super-hero's cape; he is the man I will never be. He is the longings, the day-dreams, the what-ifs of two decades. Although I have borrowed much of my own background for him, the images in the work are a mixture of my own archive, my family archive, found images online and images generated by AI. The intention is that this is not apparent in the work itself, but that a lingering sense of mystery pervades it. The use of royalty free and AI generated imagery is in place of hiring models and photographing them. It fills in the gaps that exist in my own archive.
The use of text in the book was carefully considered. The use of two different fonts highlights the different meanings between the captions and the more narrative pieces. The captions seem truthful, and are not questioned. The narrative pieces add mystery in places, authenticating “facts” in others, while never seeking to explain the work as a whole.
The work is available as a physical book, in a book review video on YouTube, and is supported by a fictive Instagram account. This way the work exists in places and ways that make it accessible to different audiences and give it a different context. The Instagram account serves to give legitimacy to the person of John Harper.
Robin Caddy, October 2022
