Once a perfect fitting jacket

HIGHLY COMMENDED

2023

digital photographic print

60 x 42 cm

I'm a photographer based in south-east Queensland. I discovered photography late in life and enjoy portrait photography in particular.

I was honoured to have met and to be able to photograph 99-year-old Doug Simonds as part of my ongoing Reluctant Heroes portrait project.

Doug is a Second World War veteran who is essentially blind, still living by himself, and fiercely independent. I had met Doug before our portrait session where he told me of his service in Borneo and Malaya, and his life before and afterwards.

It was when I returned on the day of the sitting and saw him dressed in his favourite tweed jacket and medals that I realised that I needed to document him differently other than a formal pose.

This image of him in his once well-fitting jacket illustrates the effects of time, age, and humility. While standing in his kitchen in suburban Ipswich it shows his resilience (perhaps stubbornness, according to his family). But the sense of him being consumed by his jacket plays light to his frailness, and the inevitable was profound to me.