The other day a very old friend was telling me about how he’d read that one of the signs of getting older was putting on your favourite shorts, staring into the mirror and seeing Baden Powell staring back.
Now I’d like to add to that, staring at a photo of yourself and seeing your dad staring back. Normally I see Stephen Merchant staring back*, but not this time.
It was shot on a bright day and I had to look skywards for the pic so it was a perfect recipe for the undeniable crowsfeet to be fully evident. But still. What next, shiny speedos and jumpers with patches at the elbow?
The picture was by Harry Borden. It’s for the Observer Magazine, out this coming Sunday. I’d rather hoped they would use a particular picture by Jason Ingram – partly because I’m vain enough to want them to use what I think may be the least worst picture of me, and partly as I had a jammed week and photoshoots – even for just one shot – can take an age. And Jason is a mighty fine photographer.
Nope, it had to be Harry, they said – he only lives up the road and he is a great photographer.
Photographers can be a tedious bunch – often very egotistical, incapable of talking about anything else but themselves, and it’s a reasonably accurate (although by no means infallible) law that the more average the snapper the more comprehensively they will exhibit those traits.
I checked out Harry’s website and immediately started recognising images: I know that picture of Richard Harris, that’s the image of Michael Hutchence (this one), what an amazing picture of Gilbert and George. He has over 100 images in the National Portrait Gallery. He can take a picture. Nice for me then, that he lives part of the time only half an hour away.**
So, if you want to know what my dad looked like (if he’d been paler, taller and slimmer), get the Observer on Sunday 5 September.
The top pic is of a purple hazel….the middle one’s a Czar plum…the bottom one of Szechuan pepper plants.
* They must be using that pasty-faced-pencil-neck filter on their cameras
** After being here, he was off to Israel, to shoot Blair (only photographically story-hunters)
Your opening line made me laugh, I wonder what the female equivalent is
That purple hazel is gorgeous!
Emma is right that Hazel shot is fab.
Do you think that if we all write to the Observer they will publish that picture instead of the one of you? (or probably a better hazel shot taken by a proper photographer like Harry Borden, or Jason*)
Nice plum shot as well **
* If we are all really flattering about Jason will he lend us his baby?
**Never thought I would say that.
I have to remember to grab a paper on Sunday then.
Ditto the appreciation of the hazel and plum photos!
Love the hazel shot. I've just had my photo taken on the allotment in a much lower key way for a book jacket thingy and I was shocked to discover that I have turned into Joyce Grenfell without noticing: toothy and sensibly clad and all that. Sigh. I wanted to be Helen Mirren.
Oh. I thought you meant THIS picture of Michael Hutchence.
http://inquisidor71.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/hutchence-michael.jpg
PG – probably putting on your favourite dress and seeing the person who delivered your first born in uniform?
Emma/JAS/SS/AB – glad you liked the hazel shot – taken on the way back in as an afterthought, after an hour or two taking pics…happens rather too frequently to be coincidence *remembers to try a little less hard*
Thursday – No, not that one…but then I was never much of an INXS fan (dreadful name for a band, I've only just realised) so maybe I hadn't seen too many.