Alice

I am half way through a big loft clear out so as we can put Fin up there, so that finally the boys can have their own rooms and maybe, just maybe, bedtimes will be a little less like hell and more like bedtime.

Anyway, today I found this picture, along with a few others, from a brief but very memorable modelling career in my mid-teens.

This picture was taken in May 1987, it was published on my 15th birthday in a local newspaper. The photo was taken by a photographer named John Hicks, whom I remember to be somewhat older than me, kind and engaging and a man who made me feel at ease. We did two shoots together, one at a tea garden and the other at a railway station. After the second shoot I remember him giving me his card and saying to stay in touch, he said that he'd send me the contact sheet and some large prints - when they arrived he had written little messages of encouragement on the photos in silver pen. I was very touched.

In my young mind I was at the beginning of a fabulous modelling career and I suppose I did have some success, in as much as I worked very hard to get an agent in London, but fate intervened later that year when I had to have major spinal surgery, and that was that.

I remember that John was at the beginning of his own career and was leaving town to go and live in London in search of brighter lights. I remember thinking he'd make it.

Once I properly looked at the unearthed portfolio of 1987 I realised that this image has huge relevance to my reflective self portraits and my journal name. The shoot was called Alice's Adventure and there I am, Alice, reflected in a broken mirror, sitting in the boughs of a tree in a garden I magically wandered around barefoot as a little girl. Although I hadn't ever forgotten about this photograph it had never occurred to me before that it may have made a key imprint on me, a subliminal influence that has emerged through my own photography.

I've looked John Hicks up and I think this is him - he's done pretty well for himself.

I'm going to get in touch with him to complete the circle.




If you look hard you'll see a little bit of my today's reflection too.


The awfully long series.