Charging the Void

I took these series of photos for the last photo theme of "Personal" at the Democratic Camera Club here in Edinburgh. The vase in the photos was made by my dad who taught ceramics and was an art lecturer. 

I first wrote about the vase in a blog post called Forget Me Not three years ago. Unfortunately, the vase had just broken which prompted me to write about it. I also wrote about the other objects I had inherited from my dad and how, although I was sorry this particular piece had broken, I wasn't even sure if I had really liked it. Although I love some of his other works, I wasn't really sure what to think of this one. Then, I wrote about it as if I had made peace with the fact that the vase was broken, saying that memories of a person shouldn't have to be preserved through objects, especially if you don't find that object particularly attractive. I may have written that, but I didn't throw it away. 

When we moved to Edinburgh from Germany in 2013 I took the two heavy pieces of the broken vase (it broke at the "neck" so to speak) with me and eventually found a restorer. (It must have been one of the few moves where things get mended rather than break). I must admit when it was away at the restorers, I didn't miss it much and only remembered where it was when they called me a few months later. When I picked it up I was amazed as I couldn't see the break at all. 

I still don't really know if I like the vase. The project gave me the opportunity to find a way of photographing it now it was mended.  In these photos I wanted to show a process of relating to it, not just showing the object itself. Maybe because the vase dates from the 70s, the artist Rosemary Trockel popped into my head and I began to think about how she addresses feminism and politics in her work, and how she mixes the distinctions between craftsmanship and high art, all themes in her work at that time. I then conducted rather functionary arbitrary actions on the vase, like a performance. I used the vase as a pillow and also as a rolling pin. (as far as I could see there was no functional use to the vase, so I gave it one.) In another I used it for target practice, throwing screwed up pieces of paper to see if I could get one in the opening at the top. (Quite a futile game, but an interesting way to map failure.) I shook out its contents onto a piece of white paper (the vase became almost corporeal, dust and debris reminiscent of ashes). 

At the meeting the main feedback I received was to film it as a performance. The term "(positively) Charging the Void" was used by artist and lecturer David Grinly in his introduction to the theme of "Personal" on why we take photographs today. 

Forget Me Not

Ceramic Bottles by Ian Marshall

One early May morning, my brothers and I gathered at my father’s flat. We had just a few hours to decide what to keep and what to leave.

Belongings once private were now laid bare because of practicalities. We had to sort through papers and find important documents. It seemed strange that we could simply take an object off a shelf, open up a book, and all without asking the owner's permission. I felt like a trespasser, despite the fact that the person who used and loved these objects was no longer here. 

Objects now turned over in our hands, scrutinised. Objects in limbo and with an uncertain future. 

I took an odd array of objects that day. Some of practical use: a cheese grater, a metal spatula, a coffee maker, an omelette saucepan. When I use them I feel closer to my father as he was an avid cook and I know that he valued such practical things. On the other hand, the omelette pan has since given up the ghost of its non-stick surface after four years, and burnt and sticking eggs are hardly a fitting tribute to my dad. But still, I cannot bring myself to throw it away. 


Other, more precious, objects have also suffered. In transit to Germany, a nail had made its way into one of my father's paintings, puncturing the canvas. While mourning at its imperfection, I was forgetting that I had literally saved it when I chose it that day. 


Then a few weeks ago, I heard a crash in the bedroom and instinctively I knew what it was before I went to see the damage, as if the thud and crash had happened within me. The kids had been racing around the flat on bobby cars. A piece of sculpture that my dad had made was lying on the floor in two pieces. It had been on my dressing room table for want of a "home". Tall and thin, I had deemed my dressing place the safest place. I was wrong. 


I have to admit, though, that as much as I felt devastated, I felt some kind of release. As if I had been given some kind of permission to let go of this one.  I had taken all these objects with me to remember my dad by, but if I was honest, some of them were not really to my taste and others I had no idea where to put them in my home.

Luckily, I still have other objects of his that are intact and I hope to be a better caretaker of these, though I will never know what they meant to him exactly.

Still,  the memories of a home brewed cup of strong coffee, in those days quite exotic and grown up to me as a teenager, brought to me in a ceramic cup, and thai meals lovingly prepared by him bring me nearer to my father than any of these objects did.

And they, like other memories of him,  cannot be so easily broken.

Ceramic Bottle with signature stamp(underside) by Ian Marshall