When my Dad died in 2017 I turned to photography to see me through my grief. Photography has been my saviour in many times of trouble. I began photographing my father again by photographing his things. Working several days a week in his home I photographed everything he had from the unique items such as his literary awards (he was a Grand Master of Science Fiction) to the most mundane items such as sink plungers. I went through intense emotions picking up each of his possessions, photographing them in my makeshift studio in his dining room or his bedroom and placing them carefully back from where I had found them.

Often when we clear the home of a loved one we take little notice of ordinary day-to-day items. The image shown here is the one I find most intriguing and would like to ask my Dad about. This nailbrush is clearly well used but for what? He didn’t use hair dye so that is not what is clogging up the bristles. I will never know. What I believe this image does is something central to photography: it takes an item (it is often a person or a scene) that would usually be overlooked and separates it out for our scrutiny. One may be revolted by this image, or fascinated by it, but one is looking at it and perhaps seeing a nailbrush properly for the first time.

Documenting my father’s things took a year and resulted in over 9,000 images. These images have been exhibited internationally and published as a limited edition artist’s book and a hardback photobook titled ‘My Father’s Things’.