by David Loftus
I remember little of her wedding, my post-traumatic brain blurring the present and struggling to get me through the day. Samantha had asked me to read a psalm in the church on the day and, after many refusals, I reluctantly agreed to do it. I stood, kissed my mother on the cheek and walked slowly to the front. As I passed the eerily silent front pews, all eyes upon me, I heard a gasp and, slicing the quiet like a knife, a lady exclaimed: ‘Oh my God, John has come to the wedding.’
Thursday 15 March
The Mews
A day of shooting stills, filming and editing. In the pre-digital days, the editing process consisted of a bike courier to the lab, a tense wait of a few hours, then a bike home, followed by a couple of hours hunched over a lightbox with a magnifying loupe and a pair of scissors, while carefully cutting out transparencies deemed okay to send to the clients. Now in the digital age it is hours of screen time, something my headache-prone self screams to avoid but cannot. Last night I had to go through all five shooting days of the British Heart Foundation. At a guess, I averaged about 800 shots per subject with two portrait locations per day. I look, I colour balance, I check focus, I check expressions and framing. I might straighten a slightly wonky horizon or vertical, I adjust contrast, saturation and exposure. Each picture or capture, if not deleted, will take five or six minutes before moving on to the next. The total remaining captures are renamed, backed up twice, and then processed to transfer to the client. It’s certainly not the fun part of job but it is impossible to avoid. I shoot every day, so it tends to be a night-time chore and an immense strain on the vision.
Last night I edited the British Heart Foundation photos of the sweet and delightful little girl with DiGeorge syndrome. I will certainly never forget her serious little face. Taking someone’s portrait is an intensely intimate affair; you witness all of the emotions, frailties, strengths, insecurities and confidences of your subject. I often think it’s a one-way ticket; I’m so focused on my subject’s eyes and their character that I notice little else. Occasionally upon editing, I notice objects or intrusions in the background that I hadn’t noticed through the lens. I’m not someone who alters my images afterwards so my preference is to delete, though in little L’s case I deleted very few. On this rare and beautiful shoot it was a two-way experience; I focused on her and her big blue eyes also completely focused on me and my camera, straight at me. She is someone I shall never forget.
Saturday 17 March
The Mews
On 1 January 2015, in Marrakech, I gave Ange a beautiful cloth-bound book of 800 or so blank pages, and vowed to draw in it every day for 365 days. I finished the last illustration on 31 December, in the same spot in Marrakech. Just as when I started this book on 1 January 2018 with the intention of writing every day, and I had no idea whether the project would last a day, a month or a year. I hadn’t drawn for years and hadn’t written anything except the odd magazine article for a while. My illustrative effort started so tentatively. Upon completion I handed Ange her book, as promised, and she was delighted. During that year she would often quietly ask me, like a parent to a homework-avoiding child, whether I’d ‘done my book today’. She does the same now; sometimes a new blank page can look awfully daunting.
Tuesday 20 March
Shooting at the Mews, snow still on the ground. The last time I remember snow remaining for days is probably from our childhood. Dined with Ange at Daphne’s in Kensington and ordered my ultimate comfort food, spaghetti vongole.
Twisting my fork to eat my spaghetti takes me back to the time when Johnny perfected his left-handed eating abilities. We were both trying hard to establish our differences and one of my distinguishing habits was that while he was a spaghetti twister using a fork and spoon, I was a spaghetti chopper, slicing my spaghetti into small strands and eating it with a spoon. By that time I had perfected my very own signature spaghetti bolognese, taught by my mother: chopped onions, carrots and celery, good minced beef, button mushrooms, bay and sage, tomato purée and of course spaghetti. I knew John had been practising for weeks as a left-hander, and I didn’t believe for a second that he’d been that way inclined for over fifteen years. One night I cooked up my finest spag bol to catch him out. I must have smiled so smugly as he tried to negotiate the spaghetti twist with fork and spoon, an impossible left-handed task to a natural right-handed eater.
I got my comeuppance years later, not long after John died, when Peter, his old boss, took me to his favourite Italian restaurant. He’d invited me in to tell me of his plans to plant a tree in John’s memory and name Nucleus’ new building John Loftus House. He also asked me whether I would take over John’s godfatherly duties to Clio, his newborn daughter. I must have looked awful; I certainly felt terrible. I can remember Peter kindly taking the menu out of my hands, ordering a fine bottle of wine, and telling me that he would order. He ordered spaghetti bolognese. The memories were so vivid that I broke into a hot sweat and had to run to the bathroom to cool myself down. Upon returning to the table, there it was, the long strands of spaghetti coiled into a terrifying and daunting mountain. I was twenty-five years old, there was no way I could ask for a knife to chop it into bite-size pieces. I looked, I watched, I learned. It was the first time I twisted and the last time that that particular difference remained a difference.
Wednesday 21 March
The Mews
I’m sitting quietly on our roof terrace, surrounded by a lifetime of special mementos. Broken models of fighting boats, conch shells from the Bahamas, pottery found in Paros, a Tibetan wooden elephant, a Buddha’s copper head. It’s cold, but I’ve made a temporary camp in a suntrapped corner, sleeves rolled high, face to the sun like a Galapagos lizard soaking in the rare warmth, eyes closed and deep in thought. Purple crocuses I’ve planted are barely holding their own, the shock of the springtime snow a rude reminder that the spring sunshine of weeks ago was a globally warmed aberration.
Last night I was at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, performing my newly appointed role as chairman of the judges for the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year awards, a global competition for professional and amateur food and travel photographers. I was nervous, the room was filled with the great and good of publishing, those who had achieved, exhibited and commissioned food and travel photography. My job was to introduce them to each other, and then encourage good-natured debate as to which photos deserved to win. Everyone here disagreed, so I did my best, opening with a nervous little speech, trying to get the job done with minimum fuss and falling out.
I sat next to the sweetest chatterbox, a man called Barney, who until last year had been a presenter on the TV show Blue Peter. Charming, eloquent and entertaining, I really loved his company. He had just taken a sabbatical after nearly twenty years presenting children’s television. His current bliss was to drive his camper van down long coastal highways, chasing electrical storms with his camera kit, a few clothes and little else. He’s basically living the old-fashioned ‘find yourself’ hippy lifestyle, the kind of life that’s hard to sustain, but certainly enviable to me. The joy he gets from taking photos, for himself, without a client or commissioner, are the happiest moments of his life.
I wonder whether I will again take photos in the same way. I love my job, I really do, and I am blessed to be sent all over the world shooting and directing and shooting again, but to go somewhere purely to shoot for oneself seems like a distant pleasure.
Yesterday I started planning my ten days in Paros, the island I used to visit with John. This time I’m going back, after over twenty years, with my wife Ange, and my children Paros and Pascale. They will all be seeing the island for the first time. Sitting at my father’s old desk in the garage I’m struck, upon opening the drawers, how much the inner darkness still smells of him. Such an evocative smell, a fragrant mixture of wood, ink and leather. Some items in the desk haven’t moved in over three years, there feels no need, there is little in there that is practical. It’s just stuff. Memories and stuff.
; Thursday 22 March
The Mews
Today I continued to shoot through an uncomfortable but not severe migraine, resting on my bed between shots, drinking bottles of water and downing several double Solpadeines. Headaches have terrified me for over half my life and the nature of my job, particularly during intensive periods like this, can be a terrific strain on eyes and head. Alternating right-eye focusing followed by laptop, quickly followed by focusing and back to laptop. I’ve had two or three major migraines in my life and they have all hospitalized me overnight, so this is a relatively mild one. Like most people, I steer myself to a darkened room, don’t look at my phone, close my eyes and shut out everything and everyone. Now I can feel the headache behind my right eye and if I press gently the pain will increase, so I hold my head gently and try hard to meditate. It rarely works but it is all I can do and the shoot must go on.
We all have phobias: the dark, spiders, bats, flying – they are all quite rational really. I used to be frightened of guns, but since I’ve had them pointed at me I’ve realized it’s not the gun itself but the irrational and unpredictable person holding the gun that scares me. Since being hit on the head with a bullet I’ve realized that the pain is the same pain. Don’t get me wrong, it really bloody hurts, but the pain is manageable.
When John and I were young we feared Ice Ages, Halloween and, as I’ve said before, brain tumours. Since Johnny was ill I can add lumbar punctures to my list. A lumbar puncture, also known as a spinal tap, is a medical procedure in which a needle is inserted into the spinal canal, most commonly to collect cerebrospinal fluid for diagnostic testing. It can also be used to relieve pressure on the brain. John, in his usual way, accepted them as a necessary evil in his fight against what was happening in his head, but to me they were hideously nasty and almost barbaric. I wouldn’t wish a lumbar puncture on my worst enemies. As I lie nursing my feeble excuse for a migraine it is all I can think of; John, lying in the foetal position in my father’s pink cotton pyjamas, his lower back exposed to accept this horrifyingly long and thick needle into his spine.
Our childhood prayers, kneeling side by side next to my lower bunk, praying that the Ice Age wouldn’t return, and that we wouldn’t catch a brain tumour went silently unanswered.
Friday 23 March
It’s the headache that will not budge. One of my ambitions through the writing of this book has been to give up the Solpadeine. It’s been over twenty-five years of daily doses and I’ve noticed that they no longer work on me as a painkiller. Paracetamol, codeine and caffeine; I know I shouldn’t be taking them every few hours – it’s time to stop.
Shooting at the Bluebird restaurant in Chelsea today
Since John died I have found it hard to relate to other identical twins. I have a few chums, including one of my best friends, Peter Hornsey, who is a non-identical, fraternal twin. What is striking in the case of the non-identical twins is their lack of contact with each other in adulthood. Peter and John barely speak; Peter is a corporate lawyer, ultra-fit and slim, bleached spiky hair and a penchant for punk and new wave, while John is a hairy, burly farmer ploughing fields in Lincolnshire. They are like chalk and cheese.
Reflecting on the profound relationship of twins, Jack and Finn Harries often come to mind. They are the identical twin sons of writer Rebecca Frayn and film producer Andy Harries. The first time I met them was as toddlers, soon after I had agreed to be featured in Rebecca’s Cutting Edge documentary, Identical Twins. During the filming I was shot photographing two identical twins, Jane and Emma, two very talented and beautiful designers who collaborated on some amazing design projects. Both girls were lovely; however, whenever I saw them I found myself tongue-tied and uncomfortable and ultimately terribly sad. I knew what it was: I was deeply jealous of their bond with each other and the future they had before them, the future that I had been so tragically denied. We eventually lost contact and I knew that it was my fault, my inability to be lucid in their company, my lone-twin neediness and my sorrowful state.
With Jack and Finn it has been very different, I feel the usual neediness inside me, but I feel that with all of my friends. But the pain of jealousy isn’t there. Whereas with Emma and Jane I felt like half a friend, with Jack and Finn I felt a very close bond, even though I’m as old as the sum of both their ages. Like John and me, Jack and Finn had celebrated a youth-long twinship by being each other’s best friends, hanging out together, shooting ideas, talking together, in a way that didn’t end when they finished school.
Upon leaving, Jack decided to document his gap year, travelling around the world, larking about and sofa-surfing, sharing the videos he made on YouTube under the title of ‘Jack’s Gap’. Five months in and Finn was introduced to their rapidly growing following, through their dare-do antics and on-camera bonhomie. I watched in awe as their online audience quickly grew from one million to two million and upwards!
I bonded with Jack and Finn over camera advice. Between the two of them they have so much talent and creative and intellectual energy, but feel in a constant state of rush – so much to do in so little time. It’s interesting to watch the period they find themselves in now, the ebb and flow of projects, of relationships with each other and others, with girlfriends and their parents.
It reminded me of a time when John and I were at a similar age. Our father, who was in his seventies, had a very minor stroke, so minor he literally laughed it off. But Mother recognized it immediately as a sign of grander problems, so together they decided that we should sit down as a family to discuss all the what-ifs and eventualities if something should ever happen to either or both of them. Father had taken to sorting out his stuff, his albums and family sketchbooks, his ancestral art collection, his father’s stamp collection and so forth.
I sat alone on our favourite stair as John argued endlessly with our parents that he didn’t need to talk about the what-ifs and wherefores of losing them, that he was happy to pass that mantle over to me. It was the one time that he didn’t recognize his ten minutes of life superiority to me. It was the same step that I sat on, all night, alone, as John’s body lay in a ‘state of rest’ next to the family treasures, under the huge oil of Loch Lomond, beside his beloved Steinway.
Saturday 24 March
I feel like I’ve known Jack and Finn for ages and it seems extraordinary, considering how much they have achieved, that they are not yet at the age at which I lost John. Now they are forging different and separate careers, Jack as a gifted documentary maker and photographer, Finn as an architect in New York. As I see them at this crossroads in their lives, both personally and creatively, I can’t help but wonder about the what-ifs. What if John hadn’t died? Would we have struggled in a creative partnership like Jack and Finn did, finding solace in a temporary degree of separation, coming together, as they do, on special projects? It’s hard to know. John found my creative style limiting and frustrating, although he was always complimentary. Commissions he sent me from Nucleus were definitely meant to test me and push my own boundaries, and though he never saw me forge a career as a photographer, he saw the pictures I processed at home and loved that it was a skill set so different from his own. I had a darkroom at The Beeches and would often spend hours under the house in red-lit darkness developing prints. I would curse him sometimes as he tried to beat my down-the-stairs-in-three-or-four leaps record, causing lumps of plaster to disengage from the ceiling and plop into my cat-litter trays of processing chemicals. I have no memory of him ever joining me down in my den, though our father would often join me to help hang my prints on the laundry rack, much to Molly’s chagrin.
John particularly liked my series of Parisian prints, images of our Uncle Pierre in Place de la République, his home there, and images of the Paris Metro, few of which sadly have survived. Occasionally he’d borrow my prints to paint from and on my mother’s wall is an almost perfect gouache rendition of eighteenth-century shutters, the view from Pierre’s apartment, copied in muted tones from one of my photo
s, printed under the stairs in my musty darkroom.
I know my friendship with Jack and Finn is probably intensely one-sided, and I am aware yet again of my neediness as the lone twin, worrying unnecessarily if a text or Instagram message isn’t noticed or returned. As individuals I am aware that they are as important to me as any other friend is. In fact, they are especially important to me. Ultimately, these special bonds can only be explained through conversation with other identical or lone identicals, but to talk of the death of one’s twin to surviving identical twins is almost impossible; the break of that bond is too painful and shocking to describe, too unbelievable to imagine.
Sunday 25 March
Shooting at the Mews on a Sunday for Clarence Court eggs
I saw Mother yesterday, sitting in her corner chair in her dressing gown, holding court. She had been in to the hospital for a scan and her cancerous lumps had not diminished. She’s overtired and her legs hurt a lot. She asked me what I thought about stopping the drugs, therefore losing the pain in her legs, but allowing the cancer to grow. Not an easy conversation, but we discussed the pain in her feet and legs versus the pain of a rapidly spreading cancer as opposed to a slowly growing one. She feels that she should ‘carry on regardless’. We discussed the misrepresentation of the garden robin, Paros’ work placement, the art at Belsay Hall, and migraines and the division between Loftuses who suffer from them and Loftuses who don’t. She also gave me a display of two new walking sticks, ergonomically designed to fit her hands and remain standing if she lets go, possibly the daftest thing my medical brethren have brought her, as they fall over on an uneven surface and she has to bend her aching and concave body down to retrieve them, a near impossible task, leaving her frustrated but chuckling.