Pictures of a Family

When we first met we were standing shoulder to shoulder against the gable of Nolby Elementary School. A few metres in front of us, his older brother and some of his friends stood lined up like a firing squad swinging sharpened sticks with freshly stolen apples stuck on them. The apples were slung at us with considerable speed, but we were never hit. Standing there next to him, I could feel his body flinch each time an apple smashed against the pale yellow wall behind us. We lived in the same neighbourhood and that fall we became friends. He was a class ahead of me and was by far the bolder of the two of us. He was always the one to take the first step and I was the one who followed. He always chose a higher point to jump from. He had sex before I did, and when I was thinking about buying a moped he had already sold his. He still lives in the town were we grew up and now he has a wife, two sons, a home in a terraced house and a steady job. The security of his life appalls and attracts me at the same time. It is difficult to point a finger at the choices (if we made any) which have determined our present lives. I have spied on him and his family for a year now and secretly photographed them. There are over a hundred rolls of film in my archives. We have made a contract in which they have given me permission to spy on them. In other words, they know that I'm there but they don't know when.