Early Days

Early days is a documentation of my daughters early years. A non conventional family album of sorts, shot intuitively but informed by investigations in to early childhood development and reflections of my own early years and becoming a father. I have aimed to find a visual language that reflects these thoughts. That reflects Agatha's intense presence in the moment and my own distant recollections and 'almost' memories of being a toddler. Childhood amnesia is the notion that we forget our early childhood memories (3.5 years is the average earliest memory of an adult). It’s not that we don’t make these memories it’s almost like our cognitive development renders them obsolete and prunes them from our mind as we grow. Although there are some hypotheses why, no one really knows the reason! The result is a chasm between an adults experience of life and a child's presence that cannot be bridged through a personal shared understanding of the situation only through observation. Agatha is at a point in her life where we both, father and daughter, create memories together. We have conversations about what we have been doing, we share experiences, we tell relatives about the past weeks events over the phone, we do all this normal stuff and I will cherish these memories in to my old age I have no doubt. But to Agatha these memories are transitory and as she begins to build her own life story, like the rest of us, she will remember none of these early days. These years are lost.