JULY 26, 2018 at 3:30 PM (MOTHERWELL, SCOTLAND)
By Derek Clark
My sister lost her fight with cancer at 4:47 am on Tuesday 17th July 2018. She was 55 years old. Joyce was diagnosed with a brain tumour back in November 2016 and despite 6 months of radiotherapy, 14 months of chemotherapy, cannabis oil and honey imported from Israel, one tumour became two and it was clear treatment was not going to work.
Joyce kept her sense of humour right to the end, she never complained or showed any sign of self-pity, but a stroke changed her permanently and made communication more difficult and then finally almost impossible. At the end it was although everything but her lungs shut down, each breath a fight for survival. In the last few minutes of her life, she managed to open her eyes. She was surrounded by family, each of us holding on to her, making sure she knew we were there. Finally, her breath slowed, a few more breaths with longer gaps in between and then silence. She was gone forever.
July 24th, 2018. The funeral was today, exactly one week after she died. We couldn’t believe how many people showed up to pay their respects. It was a sea of faces, some I knew some I didn’t and some I should have known, but didn’t recognise. As requested by my brother in law, Joyce’s coffin was carried by her three brothers and three sons as her favourite singer Andrea Bocelli played in the background.
I've been asked so many times in the past week how I and the rest of my family were. I say that we’re ok, we're getting there. But the real truth is that we are all hanging by a thread right now. My brother in law, their three sons, my two brothers and our other halves, we’re all hanging by a thread. But my parents just buried their only daughter and that's just not right. It's not the way it's supposed to happen. I don't know how they're supposed to move on from this.
So we are all hanging by a thread. But we’re a close family, and if you twist and intertwine thread it becomes rope, and rope anchors the ship, it holds down the tents in a storm. As I write these words I look down at my wrist at the piece of climbing rope that’s been there for almost a year. I realise that it's the stuff that keeps us from falling.
Click on each picture for the caption
July 26, 2018 at 6:30AM (Malmesbury, England)
BY KEVIN MULLINS
It's 6:30am on Thursday.
I've had possibly the busiest three weeks of my life, both professionally and personally.
6:30 is actually late for me. I'm an early riser but today I have a family photography session locally at 8am and I found myself dozing thinking about that and the many other things I need to achieve today.
This weekend is my light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel. After Saturdays wedding I escape to Spain for a month, so expect my next set of journal entries to be as such inspired by the Southern Spanish events around me.
Each morning I check on the children, I walk to the kitchen, I rub Buddha's head out of superstition and I think about making coffee.
July 24, 2018 at 11:29 AM (Zaventem, Belgium / Dunkirk, France)
By Bert Stephani
Today I've spent another day photographing at the refugee camp near Dunkirk, France. I feel it's my obligation as a story teller to tell the stories that I believe aren't told enough. It's personal ... and usually I'm pretty professional in being personal. But today the camera didn't function as a professional shield, it acted as a personal rear view mirror.
I stumbled upon two dusty boxes in my garage with toys from back when my kids were small and decided to give them to the many refugee children in the camp. Some of the toys have been in our house for fifteen years and opening the boxes brought back countless memories of happy childhoods, contrasted by smiles from children who were just born in the wrong country.
I'm sad, angry and happy
23 juillet 2018 à 19h35 (Toulouse, France)
By Vincent Baldensperger
Je t’écoute et t’observe, me tourner autour, me gratter et me renifler, me grimper sur les épaules.
Dis moi, tu t’appelles comment, tu as quel âge, tu aimes les oiseaux, les fleurs, les papillons, les hérissons, les escargots ?
Et les arbres tu les aimes aussi ?
Tu sens l’herbe folle, ta voix me chatouille un peu, tes mains comme de petits abricots.
Raconte moi tes rêves.
July 23, 2018 at 9:33 AM (Otterburn Park, Canada)
By Patrick La Roque
I shouldn’t read the news in the morning. Hell, I shouldn’t read the news, period, these days. All it does is ramp up my blood pressure and that’s not good for anything is it? Héloïse is off to summer camp this week, Anaïs is still sleeping the sleep of a budding teenager. Jacob just had breakfast and Cynthia’s downstairs, watching her latest rushes.
If I close my eyes our backyard pool almost sounds like a small forest brook.
I should meditate for a bit. Today’s going to be another scorcher...
Fortress
By Patrick La Roque
I sit on a beach thousands of miles from home. I hear waves and their undying flux, like claws of the eternal, grinding. I hear id and ego battling it out, the persona emerging...you are the loner it says, you are content. No. The truth is, I die a small death without the presence of others.
I am not the fortress I once thought I was.
If they let us linger, we steal atoms from those around us. We ingest particles through osmosis, feeding on thoughts and energy and light. And when darkness falls we consume it whole as well.
Soft-spoken vampires
eyes and ears and teeth to the ready
yet giving as we take.
I am not the fortress I once thought I was.
I could fly to the ends of the earth but nothing would ever fill me the way you do. And so I rush the rush of mad machine horses, legs pumping in a cloud of blistering steam. I tear at the sky and asphalt with my mouth, pull them apart until this void is closed and distant.
I am not the fortress I once thought I was.
Signs Of Life
PHOTOGRAPHY & TEXT BY DEREK CLARK
I held my sister up as she waited for her final pill of the day, the eighteenth. We were alone and she looked at me and shook her head. I asked her why she was shaking her head and her reply was “What kind of life is this?”.
This was the first time she sounded like she'd had enough and I struggled to muster an argument for the defence. But before I found one she said: “I suppose it's a life”. I nodded my head, unable to speak. But this time was not because I didn’t have an answer, but because emotion hit me in the back of the throat without warning. Emotion that chokes your words and throws out awkward silence for all present to endure.
It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was chatting to Steve and his wife Amanda about alternative treatments that he and my sister could/should try. We were at Photo Talks, which Steve ran with Phil Paine in St Albans. I had flown down and had the honour of being the final speaker on the final night. Photo Talks had been a great success, but due to Steve’s cancer diagnosis and Phil’s imminent move to Wales, it was coming to an end.
Shortly after that, we invited Steve to be a guest writer/photographer on our June 2017 issue. Steve’s essay was called ‘I Live To See Another Day’ and as it turns out, was published one year before his death. Steve was already writing his personal blog and telling his very private story in a very public way. He showed great bravery and courage in that blog and It’s well worth sitting down with a coffee and reading Steve’s story in his own words.
My heart sank when I read the following words in his post titled ‘Playing To The Gallery’.
“My liver is failing. This is the end game, and this will be my last post. Nobody can quite believe it, but I know I have days not weeks.”
That indeed was Steve’s final post, but his work will live on for many years, which thankfully we will be able to consume soon. Neale James is in the final stage of editing a documentary film about Steve which will be coming really soon. Books of Steve's work are already in the pipeline too.
**UPDATE** The film by Neale James can be found at the foot of this page.
Cancer is the worst of diseases, but it brings out the best in people. I see it all around me right now. My parents and my brother in law rise to new heights each day with their compassion, strength, love and unwavering commitment. Falling apart will have to wait for another day because today is about care.
“Human kindness is overflowing,
but I think it’s going to rain today”
P.s.
I’m not sure this set of pictures fits with the text. My idea, as the title says, was to show signs of life without actually having any people in the pictures. I also wanted to take a walk in the streets with my camera, as Steve did in his final months and made sure to include a few bikes as Steve was a keen cyclist.
UPDATE 21st July 2018
This is the film by Neale James that I mentioned above.
The Dark Side of the Camera
BY BERT STEPHANI
Unfortunately I never met Steve but his guest post on KAGE definitely struck more than one chord with me and the sad news of Steve leaving this earth made me think.
As photographers we all want to live on in our work, well I know I do. We try to preserve everything: the youth of our children, life events, fashion, our friends, loved ones, our environment and how it changes over time ... everything. But what about ourselves, the dark side of the camera? Sure, every picture is to a certain degree a self portrait of the photographer but it is not a picture of ourselves. I don't care too much if there won't be a picture of me in 50 or 100 years. But maybe my children or their children would like to have at least some document of how I looked. Hey, maybe in thirty years, I would like to see how I looked as a middle aged man.
I've never been into self portraiture much although I find it very interesting to see from others. But although there are billions of people that I'd rather photograph than myself, I'm going to make an effort to do an occasional self portrait. I had to dig deep in my archives to find some that I actually like.
Thx Steve for being Steve. You have made your mark on a Belgian photographer you've never met, I can only imagine what an amazing influence you must still be to those close to you.
For Granted
On the day of Steve's memorial, I was in Brighton with Patrick. Unfortunately, I could not possibly attend and will pay my respects another time.
At 12:30pm, Neale James, who was also with us, tapped me and muttered "It's now".
Incongruously, today is my daughters 10th birthday and tomorrow is my parents 50th wedding anniversary.
As I always say to my questioning children, the world will always spin, but sometimes things fall off. And that's sad. But mostly, things are good and whilst we celebrate Steve's life in memorial form, we must also celebrate the beauty of ongoing life, love and laughter.
I thought about what to post here, image wise, and decided that I would honour Steve in the way I think he would approve of.
Just some random pictures, of the 48 hours around his memorial.
