Prologue
London, 1968
James strolled past the rows of brightly lit photographs mounted on the crisp white walls of The Barracks Gallery. The floorboards shone like cut glass, reflecting each image back onto itself like a hall of mirrors. It’s all here, he thought, twenty-five years of photography: ‘Vic Woods - World on Fire,’ the full catastrophe of his father’s life.
He had finally agreed to accompany his mother, Ruth, to the exhibition after weeks of rebuffing her invitations. He was wearing the light grey suit that she had bought him for the occasion. She had changed into a smart black dress, elegant heels to match, and a pair of dazzling earrings that danced around her head like fireflies.
‘These ain’t your regular earrings, they’re very old and very precious to me,’ she said. ‘They belonged to my mum, and they go way back in the family. They ain’t real rubies, of course, but who’d know.’
‘The Wolfe family legacy, eh,’ he said.
‘We all have them, Jimmy. That’s what families do; they hand down all their good stuff from one generation to the next.’
‘Along with their flaws,’ he said.
They inched their way through the crush of men in dark suits and women wearing posh frocks who were standing and chatting enthusiastically while they sipped colourful drinks from slender glasses. He was struck by the beauty and elegance of a petite young woman with tousled, curly black hair, wearing a tight-fitting bottle-green dress, and he instantly experienced a melancholy memory of Frankie. He wondered where she was and what she was doing. Probably surfing off Ocean Beach or rocking the night away to the Grateful Dead. He still missed her.
Mother and son squeezed their way through a shifting mass of anonymous bodies into a gallery simply entitled London, where a waiter approached them carrying a tray of champagne glasses with long, thin stems. He smiled as he paused besides James.
‘Champagne, sir?’ he asked.
‘Thank you. I will,’ he said.
‘Me too,’ said Ruth. ‘This is a bit of a treat, ain’t it? I’m not used to this kind of luxury.’
James sipped the sweet, fizzy drink: a real pleasure and quite a buzz. As he held the delicate flute to his lips he stared, amazed, at a giant photograph of his mother shot a month after she had met Vic at The Hammersmith Palais that chilly winter of 1944. The picture, taken before his father had embarked on his stellar career as a professional photographer, showed glimpses of the raw talent that would transform him into a minor celebrity.
In the image, Ruth is peeping around the frame of an open door, in imitation of a 1940s movie star.
‘That’s a great photo of you,’ said James.
‘Those days are like a dream now. I suppose everyone says that when they look back.’
‘Better days?’
‘Better and worse. Just nostalgia, I suppose. Your father said I was so beautiful that he just had to take my photograph whenever he could. I didn’t want him to, but he insisted. He said everything about me was magnificent to him. I was flattered, of course. How could I resist?’
They ambled along the lines of photographs until Ruth paused in front of a dazzling image of another woman.
‘Who’s this?’ asked James. ‘She’s a bit of a stunner.’
‘Yes, your father thought so too. Her name was Beatriz D’Sousa. One of your father’s special friends.’
‘You mean he was unfaithful?’
‘He couldn’t help himself.’
James stared at Beatriz’s enticing smile. ‘Bastard!’ he said. ‘I can’t believe you took him back.’
Ruth screwed up her face. ‘What can I say?’
She turned the ring on her finger as if she wanted to be sure that it was still there, then she looked at James, her mouth twisted into a wry smile.
‘Nothing is ever black and white, Jimmy. You see, I loved him… I still love him. He ain’t dead yet.’
‘How long has he got?’
‘A few days. A few weeks. We don’t know. You should go see him before it’s too late.’
‘Too late years ago.’
‘It’s never too late, Jimmy. It’s never too late for love. Come on, darling. Forgive and forget. Go and see him,’ she said.
Ruth stopped in front of another large colour photograph.
‘Hey, Jimmy, come and see this. It’s a bit more your era.’
James strolled to her side and gazed at the image.
‘Wild Things.’ A black and white image of new left activist Tariq Ali speaking to a large crowd in Hyde Park during an anti-Vietnam War rally has been merged with a colour photograph of Jimi Hendrix dressed flamboyantly in red and yellow, guitar in hand. The image is hallucinatory and surreal bringing together politics and music, while also pointing to its own deliberate creation.
‘Oh yeah, Tariq Ali, I met that guy once.’
‘This was Vic’s last photo. I had to basically hold him up in the dark room.’
‘You know, I think I might even have been there in the crowd.’
James bent down to read the notes to the image.
This collage marks a late turn away from the realism for which I am known. I launched my photographic career believing that all you had to do was to point the camera in the right direction and snap the real world. In time, I understood that what the camera captures is not the undisputed ‘real.’ Appearances can be deceptive. The question is not how to capture reality, but what reality to depict and with what purpose? I have sought to document our wars, with the hope that knowledge of the horror will prevent repetition. A vain hope perhaps, but I had to try.
The Vietnam Room housed the images that transformed Vic into a celebrated war photographer:
A little girl aged five or six is squatting by the edge of a dirt road, gripping the hand of a young woman who is laid flat out beside her. The woman is dead. The girl is crying. Her deep black eyes are filled with sorrow.
An old man’s face is warped and twisted with pain, as if reflected in an eerie fairground mirror. His foot lies stranded in the dirt a metre away from his bloodied ankle.
And the most celebrated photograph of them all. A black and white photograph of a young nun engulfed in flame through an act of self-immolation. She sits cross-legged on the steps of an ancient pagoda with her hands held in devotional prayer. Though her robes form the heart of an inferno, her face remains serene amid the torment.
Powerful photographs, no doubt, thought James. But how could his father have just stood there and done nothing?
Ruth tapped his arm and returned him to the present. ‘I need the loo. Back in a mo’.’
While he waited for her return, James watched the woman in the bottle-green dress chatting with a tall, silver-haired man wearing a smart Oxford blue suit. James recognised him from the exhibition’s program as its curator, Martin Durant, a long-time friend of Vic’s. He edged closer to the couple, all the better to eavesdrop.
‘It’s more of the same old, same old,’ said Martin. ‘More death and suffering and trauma passed from one generation to another. More families destroyed and more lives wrecked. It’s so senseless.’
‘We don’t seem to learn,’ she said.
‘Which is why Vic’s work is so important, now more than ever,’ he said.
Yes, worthy photographs, no doubt. But in the end, they’re only pictures. Wasn’t our family just as important? thought James.
He remembered his father’s swaying figure looming over him, like the ogre from childhood fairy tales. He smelt the stench of whisky on his breath, and he felt the dread that swept through the flat when Vic rolled home from the pub.
How could this celebrated war hero have betrayed his own son?
