Rock-pooling
The Parenting Through Stories team are based on Cornwall’s north coast. So no wonder the beach was an important part of the film we’ve been making this week - about which more in a minute.
One of my family’s favourite things to do is go rock-pooling along our craggy shoreline. On less clement days I can evoke a comparable sense of discovery when I look through photo-albums.
Pictures in this form - printed out and stuck into an album - are rock pools. Life teems below their surface, beneath the page, inviting you to dive in and submerge yourself in a technicolour world, perhaps now only sepia-coloured in your memory: the past.
Every foray into these pools disturbs more forgotten life. And you realise, as if you are underwater, that you’ve been holding your breath.
Candid Camera
I’d hunted out some recent-ish albums - maybe of a decade ago - and my three and a half year old was browsing them with me. I’d asked him to find daddy, and was surprised when I pointed out a lad with long hair. His dad now sports a buzz cut ;)
After some rumination he asked, ‘Where are you, Mummy?’
‘I’m taking the picture, hon.’
Living behind the lens is the reality of an avid picture-taker, but when it comes to family shots, being absent from the group pic is a little sad.
We have a plethora of blurry family selfies and whilst I’m happy to consign many days of mum-hood - baggy leggings, even baggier eyes - to oblivion, some evidence of my corporeal self below the neck - beyond a blurry thumb - might one day be nice to revisit.
It makes me think, as I flick through older family albums, of the person behind the lens, of the owners of the floating disembodied thumbs…who is absent? Who is looking on?
Often the most important person is missing from the shot - they’ve removed themselves to capture something. Something that made their heart swell, that they wanted to try and preserve: an image to withstand the warp of time and to sew into the weft of the family’s collective memory.
I really believe, particularly before the ‘insta’ nature of images, this more than diarising or egotistic self-narration: it is an act of love.
For in these pictures, which the photographer absents themselves from, is the quotidian beauty of a family’s fabric. Nothing ‘instagrammable’, but no filter required:
The rug at your parent’s house, long replaced, whose deep pile you can still feel between your toes.
The light of late summer evenings in gardens where you knew every crevice, fairy-house and dragon lair.
The scent of White Lace and cigarettes on the scarf you wrapped yourself up in, still warm on your cheek.
A young woman, floating on a quilt amidst a sea of hexagon patches, hand-sewing.
Although the photograph is black and white, I know the quilt is blue and the hexagons bright.
I know because it’s my granny. And I now have the quilt. Her hand’s work, under mine.
Insta-innocence
I’d argue there was an innocence in my amateur Kodaking and my parent’s shaky Cinefilms, that the knowing GIFS, stories, memes, selfies and hashtags which embellish the images we take and share today just don’t possess.
We can so readily contrive images, and bin them, retake them. The deletion and revision of the moment seems also to hollow it out, somehow.
Now, I’m aware of the fact that Parenting Through Stories is online and we filter and edit and go GIF crazy on some of our pictures. You got me.
And, we’re Crowdfunding, so we’re all aboard the marketing and promo train. Next stop, Campaign Launch (March 12th!).
But, the film we’ve been making this week, is more than a two dimensional piece of online marketing to ‘sell’ our ‘product’. It feels odd even discussing Bartley in that way.
This piece is a filmic patchwork quilt: textured with memory - and with friendship and love woven into every scene.
Why? As with many aspects of this project, it’s all about the story behind the image. And, of course, about the person behind the camera as much as the subject in front of it.
Forever Young
Adam Young is that person behind the camera. A talented filmmaker, he now owns Fine Young Films and worked his way up through the ranks of this notoriously competitive industry from runner to 1st Assistant Director. You won’t see any thumbs in the frame here.
Sarah describes Adam as the is the closest thing she has to a brother.
“We spent all of our school holidays together,” she explains. “Our parents were great friends. We stayed in a little hamlet in Cornwall. There were three families and the children ran wild: in and out of each other’s houses, going to the beach - just playing. Think ‘Swallows and Amazons’ and you get the idea.
“My highlight was our annual film which Adam’s dad made with an old camcorder, dodgy electronic keyboard and amazing plot lines. It’s not surprising Adam ended up in the film industry!”
“Knowing how creative he is and how lovely he is to be around, he was my first port of call. I am thrilled that he’s become part of the project, making the film for our Crowdfunding campaign.”
Never work with…
Adam’s professionalism and organisation guided the two-day shoot - featuring the Parenting Through Stories team, seven locations, fifteen children, eight parents, one nanny, one granny. Oh, and a character we should have known would make herself felt - Mother Nature. Given Adam and Sarah’s history of youthful summers in Cornwall, perhaps it’s fitting that the county insisted on a role in the film.
“After days of squally weather, we dropped everything to do our beach shots with the promise of the single ray of sunshine growing into something more substantial,” recalls Sarah.
“We rallied the troops and marched them and the kit down to the beach. Setting up right in the middle of Mawgan Porth beach - with unseasonal buckets and spades for shots of play! - the heavens opened and an almighty hail storm rained down. Cue adults encircling kids shielding them from some rather vicious shards of ice. Just when we had packed up, and Adam had wiped off his rather expensive and now very wet camera, the sun came out again.”
Ah, Cornwall, we love you.
Quilting Tarantino
‘Quilting’ in the twenty-first century, is not the preserve of women: and this film is a patchwork of friends, old and new, knitting something together that is larger and more beautiful than the sum of its parts.
Our individual pieces of talent - led by Sarah - are being woven into something tangible. We’re not in the frame, but behind it, creating Bartley’s Books with a thousand acts of love, our collective thumb-prints on every page, in every post and within every word.
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We hope you enjoy exploring our images on Instagram and Facebook, and can support our Crowdfunder campaign to publish the first of Bartley Books, ‘Please Stay Here, I Want You Near’ along with the Parenting Handbook which explains in more detail the PACE approach. Do look at our other blogs for more information on this.
The film’s premiere is on March 12th (the day of our Crowdfunder launch). And we all get front-row seats. Hold your breath and dive in.