Jason Wilde is a London based photographer who’s work is influenced by growing up in the city and the small dramas of family life. He looks at the shifting social landscapes reflected in the people that inhabit its diverse communities.
Left alone in his parents house in 2005, he was inspired to make a project about them when he saw a note next to the kettle, outlining that evenings dinner arrangements.
He started to photograph the notes his mum left his dad over a period of time, creating a collection of still-life montages, where each individual note is photographed and layered over a photograph of an individual paving stone.
Always written on the backs of used envelopes, the private notes are a mix of instructions, statements and requests that offer an intimate insight into the reality of everyday life in London and capture Vera and John’s mutually supportive roles within a close-knit family.
Vera & John is part 1 of Jason’s Camden Folks Tales trilogy, which is is working on now.
You can buy Vera and John here.
I think this is wonderful. I’m a decade or so younger than Vera but I grew up with ‘Make Do and Mend’ echoing in the background. Envelopes therefore, like everything else, would be reused if possible. And I still do it. Papers printed on one side only get reused as lists. Although terms like ‘carbon footprint’ and green credentials’ are bandied about I do believe that some generations grew up ‘naturally green’. We didn’t need to be told to recycle ‘stuff’ mainly because there was a deficit of ‘stuff’ anyway so less ‘tuff’ less waste. Re-reading this it makes me sound like a stuffy old dinosaur harking back to some Golden Age when ……..envelopes were re-used?! Apologies, Vera is obviously a resourceful woman who takes advantage of modern technology (mobile phone) while still seeing the value of a written note, with illustrations, on the back of an envelope. Thank for this it made me smile.
I love this – even more so as my parents are Vera & John!!! Vera’s now 83, John sadly died in 1998, aged just 63. Mum has always written little notes & things to do lists, always on scrap paper. Dad tended to recycle envelopes for his musings, though we could rarely read them as he had, what the family always referred to as, “GP’s handwriting” – unreadable to the majority! They were inseparable and truly lived by “Til death do us part”. I will enjoy looking through Jason’s work and may well have to contact him, as a fellow child of Vera & John!