First Touch
My son is two and a half. This series starts the first time he put a foot on a ball; since then I photograph once a month, with no end date.
- Frequency
- Once a month, never re-shot
- Tools
- 35mm prime · available light · no flash
- Treatment
- Black and white and low-saturation colour; the hesitation stays in
- Privacy
- No clear frontal faces; every frame checked before release
- Begun
- 2025, at age two
Photographing my own child follows the same rules as photographing anyone else's: nothing arranged, no asking him to look at the camera, no second take for the sake of a frame. I sit two metres away and wait for him to walk over.
What interests me is motor learning itself. How a body that has just learned to run deals with a round object that rolls: first standing on it, then tripping over it, and one day slowing down before contact. These changes arrive weeks apart, which is why the record is monthly.
It is also an extension of the longer study — children's bodies, emotions and the ideas placed around them. The difference is that this subject lives in my flat, and I am both the person holding the camera and part of what is happening. I am not going to pretend otherwise.
For privacy, nothing published shows a clear frontal face: the pictures are backs, silhouettes and details. The same rule governs every frame I make of other people's children.