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Land of my Father

And did I tell you that my father died too soon?

While I was at school he fell off a table, couldn’t breathe, and that was him gone.

Returning home in the back of my aunt’s pale blue bubble car full of excitement at the novelty of the ride, I felt that something good was about to happen.

My mother sat in an armchair beside the circular loop pile rug on the parquet floor, in front of the silent black and white TV. Orange velour curtains disguised the sombre mood.

She gave me the news and sent me to the kitchen to have my tea.

I was eight, my sister six, my brother three. We didn’t go to the funeral. It wasn’t done back then.

I was not the same after he left us. Not ‘late’ or ‘passed’ Dead.

Not believing that he was dead I fancied that, as for Roberta in ‘The Railway Children’, my father would re-appear one day and take me by the hand.

I waited patiently in the school playground for this miracle day after day after day.

No one spoke of him for years after. Perhaps the pain was too much to bear.

I am drawn to the highlands from whence he came.

Caroline Fraser

These words describe my father’s death when I was eight years old. Intensely personal.

I didn’t know what to do with it, but felt I needed to share it with my brother and sister in a way that was worthy of the subject matter; one that we have all struggled with over the years.

I decided to make a small book. I realised that the images made in Scotland the previous autumn were entirely appropriate to accompany the poem. They represented my need to keep returning to Scotland... the ‘Land of my Father’. The title was born and I quickly made a small book using Lightroom book module, exported to Blurb.

Some images were created using a tilt-shift lens, and others using incamera multiple exposure. Images that accompany text may not work as stand alone images, but I felt that they worked together in the context of the words. eg; my sister 6, my brother 3. Three stones on a wall representing three children.

I used a cream tone preset in Lightroom to give a unity to the images, and made a small book using Blurb software within InDesign.

The paperback arrived, and while I was reasonably happy with it, I felt that I could do better. I wanted it to be something really special.