Family Seat

My research has taken me to the British Library and to the Records Office at the Keep in Brighton to fully understand the archive I have gathered, which focuses on the material traces surrounding my parents-in-law and their home. They both passed away during the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and 2021.

Using this imagery to connect with the similar experiences of others is the central aim of the Family Seat project. The withdrawal from a family home, with its repository of memories, has been physically etched through my photography, so when closing the door for the last time, at least some of the memories remain visceral. How we shape our homes, and the boundaries we keep, preserve our poetic spaces. These form a key part of the configuring of my archive.

The Living Room photograph has a painful irony, not just because those once living are no longer with us, but also because the furniture was homemade and fitted to a personal design plan. We exited the house carefully and respectfully as if my parents-in-law were still alive, particularly in this room, such was the strength of their trace. The materiality now resides in photographs. All has now been lost to us. The suggestion of a reality is what this picture now means to me, like an architect’s drawing or an interior designer’s palette; the green settee, along with the complementary red wallpaper, are just an idea of what was, or what could have been. These images may haunt at times, but I don’t regret taking them. They can offer others a shared possibility that photography can accompany all parts of our lives with its fluid grasp.

The family’s home since before the war

Four score years since childhood and more

A corporation house eventually, bought now sold

Once a safe, secure place with many stories to be told

Furnished and fitted with a craftsperson’s eye

Perfection the mantra in a room where sea meets the sky

Raised in an Edward Street chippy, but relocated in thirty-nine

A slum clearance order under the council’s watchful eye

Five children were raised in this new council home

A home fit for heroes, straight from a government tome

Now lost to us, as time has marched on

Fixed here, in paper, a record of work

A lifetime, a memory, a time to mourn.

Poem by Andy Lloyd