I, Surrender is a project about coming to terms with home, after having lived in South Korea for several years and being unable to understand; turning 30 and feeling like a incomplete, the town where I grew up, my family and their choices in life, and my place in the world as a man and a photographer.
All my life I have fought to control everything around me, by holding everything to an unachievable and grandiose standard I bought into through ideas outside myself.
My parents are older, and they will die at some point in my life, and if I keep trying to fight everything to make my home, my family and my life into some idealised version I will live unhappily.
This project is an attempt to make peace with these facts by surrendering to them in order to live.
My mother is addicted to horses, she has 10 of them, and won’t let them go. They stop her from having any sort of life outside of looking after these animals. This isn’t so much a problem during summer, but when the Scottish winter time comes the work involved in looking after these animals is physically, mentally and emotionally draining. 4 -5 hours of back breaking psychical labour each day.
There have been discussions with me and my dad about the best way to get rid of the horses, they can’t be sold because they can’t even be given away, no one has the money to look after them. The only option is to have them “put to sleep”, a polite way of saying pay a vet to shoot them in the head.
If we killed her horses, this would break her heart, the chances of her not talking to us again is high. We tried talking with her about it many times, but each attempt has been shut down. She’s even said that looking after them is like a drug.
This was made all the worse are she slumped over at the dinner table at her 60th birthday, it turned out to be nothing more than a sudden drop in blood pressure, but everyone’s fear was that she’d had a stroke.
This didn’t serve as a wake up call. The next day she was out trying to look after the horses in the
rain.
I had attempted to do a project about this before, but it was so angry and judgemental and ugly, like a furious Daido Moriyama. After the indecent of my mothers birthday I looked back over these photos and felt deep sadness and anger at myself for photographing my family and home in this way. That I had projected all my anger and expectations that couldn’t be met on to them.
I just had to accept the facts for what they are, to try and find some beauty in what is there.
To see a cake defrosted in the microwave, melted on the outside and frozen on the inside, so common in childhood, always wondering why it wasn’t like the ones on TV. To see this not with sense of pretend joy and a fake positive mental attitude that hides the reality of circumstances, but a sense of this is what’s there. Facing reality, and not trying to run from it.
To see the inevitability of flowers wilting, only starting to fade, not ready to be put into the compost for a while, but made to feel so as they are not fresh and new imbibed with a sense sellable beauty.
To see formica and equine brown vinyl just as it is. Not be disappointed in it for not being something else and better.
I wish I could say this project made a change in me, everlasting, I flip flop on my feelings about my family and home, but looking over this reminds me to keep breathing and try to enjoy what’s there for however long it’s there.
