Guest lecture Thomas Duffield: 3
During in the lecture, Thomas Duffield said “that his work came from a small seed and expanded in its own way. If the seeds not flowing move onto another way, but you have to start with something”. Thomas said that his project helped with his own past and led to the project ‘Poppy Promises’. The name poppy promises came from something his father said; his father had an argument with a drug dealer about money, his father said to the dealer that it was just “poppy promises.” While Thomas was working on his father’s allotment, he was getting frustrated with his photography work and wanted to take images of his father. Every time Thomas wanted to talk to his father about taking photographs of him, Thomas got a lump in the back of his throat, and would just leave.
Thomas tried to deal with his past and was unable to talk to his father about his true feelings and having anxiety, he wrote his feelings down into a poem. Thomas carried on shooting images of the other members of his family, but after a while Thomas realised that his father would not be around much longer and that he needed to take these images before it was too late. He rung his dad and asked him the crazy things he could think of, as he thought that if his father said yes, he could ask him anything and his father did say yes. Thomas finished his talk to the class by saying you cannot live in the past, you have to be able to move forward.
Siobhan :)
2/12/2020
https://www.instagram.com/thomas.duffield/
All copyright of images belongs to Thomas Duffield, images taken from his website.
