Recreate a childhood memory in a photograph. Think carefully about the memory you choose and how you’ll recreate it. You’re free to approach this task in any way you wish.

• Does the memory involve you directly or is it something you witnessed?
• Will you include your adult self in the image (for example, to ‘stand in’ for your childhood self) or will you ask a model to represent you? Or will you be absent from the image altogether? (You’ll look at the work of some artists who have chosen to depict some aspect of their life without including themselves in the image in the next project.)
• Will you try and recreate the memory literally or will you represent it in a more metaphorical way, as you did in Part Two?
• Will you accompany your image with some text?
• In your learning log, reflect on the final outcome. How does the photograph resemble your memory? Is it different from what you expected? What does it communicate to the viewer? How?

It might be interesting to show your photograph to friends or family members – perhaps someone who was there at the time and someone who wasn’t – and see what the image conveys to them.  – Context & Narrative Coursebook p.82

1: Hide and Seek:

“Five… Ten… Fifteen…” Eyes shut tight. “Twenty… Twenty-Five… Thirty… Thirty-five… Forty…” Listening hard for footsteps as people vanished to the four corners of the immediate earth or at any rate the streets around your house.

Hide & Seek

“Forty-Five, Fifty… Fifty-Five… Six-ty… Six-ty-five… Sev-en-ty…” Eyes moving from side to side behind eyelids. “Seventy-five… Eigh-ty… Eighty-five… Ninety…” Shoulders hunching, a coiled spring. “Ninety-FIVE… HUNDER!“

“COMING!” – No need whatsoever to say ready or not…

2: The Jerks

I have never had an Orcadian accent (something to do with my NW English vowels, inherited from my parents through the medium of Aunty Lil who read to me daily) so I pronounce the letter J as “dzh” Orcadians on the other hand, pronounce it “tch” so James becomes Chames (or shortens to Chimmock) and the Jerks (the point where a swing – ideally with metal rods rather than chains – reaches it’s highest possible point and goes down – gedunk! – with a jerk) becomes The Chirks. Which to someone not thinking hard enough sounds like “The Church”.

I first heard this in a playpark at the start of the way down from the ridge that separated my house from my school. It was just about possible to see the spire of St Magnus Cathedral from there, or so I thought. I swung and swung and swung, standing on the wooden seat between the steel rods, higher higher but never quite high enough, before the swing clattered back, ballistic from its apogee, with a great shuddering jerk…

The Jerks

Not thinking hard enough is usually not a problem, but can occasionally become dangerous.

On another occasion I  found myself leaning further and further out over the deep hole that had been exposed by raising a wooden trap in the farmyard. “A whale? I can’t see it… Where? Where?” Getting closer and closer to toppling into the darkness…

Not thinking hard enough is usually not a problem, but can occasionally become dangerous.

The Orcadian dipthong “ayu” for “E”; so different to my short “eh”…