Something happened to set Tim Andrews on a different path. Formerly a lawyer, he has dedicated himself to portrait photography, having been photographed by over 240 artists for his ‘Over The Hill’ project. Deviating from photography, I pitched an idea for a short film, which he accepted and we built upon collaboratively, and I worked with Sharon Townson in post-production to bring it to life. This film offers a symbolic exploration of Tim’s identity; sharing his vulnerability, humanity, transformation and eventual liberation, part of his process of a philosophical approach to the challenges of life. Tim expresses and in his own way liberates himself from the pressures that come with being a ‘grown up’, which cloud the connectedness with the world we felt as children. In a playful way ‘Nothing Matters Everything Matters’ asks, is there a little of the spirit of a liberated dancer in all of us?
It was a pleasure and an honour to be able to make this film with Tim, a very inspirational person.
The film opens with a shot of a large bookcase. Tim enters the frame and climbs the ladder against the bookcase, selects a book, and begins reading Winnie the Pooh by A.A.Milne. A shot of a beach establishes the location as a seaside town, and atmos audio of waves and seabirds follows in to the next shot, where Tim sits on a sofa in a lavishly decorated room. Tim's disembodied voice talks about being at a university and seeing a student dance unashamedly, and thinking about how "if he can do it, I can do it", and how freedom of expresion makes him happy. Shots explore the beach location and show Tim in that space - both in terms of moving image portraits on the beach (see the first image), and one shot where he walks into a landscape shot of the beach wearing a walkman. Tim begins to dance on the beach during one long continuous shot. The audio is layered, featuring the atmos of the beach (Tim's footsteps, birds, the sea), and the song he is listening to.
His disembodied voice talks about being young again and rediscovering himself, as the beachy atmos matches the detailed shots of the beach (people swimming in the sea, and lifeguards help to build a sense of place), as well as being ashamed of his body in his teen years. However, during the latter section of speech we see him enter the water in his swimming trunks, swim, and leave the water as he exits the frame. He also speaks about nostalgia and how he used to hoard things that reminded him of the past, and by throwing his collection away it felt like saying goodbye to the past - "you don't have to keep hold of it all the time because you've enough to do anyway".
There are two following shots that are similar to the original dance scene but on different beach locations and Tim is naked. The music is again layered with the atmos audio.
Tim goes on to speak about his future and future possibilties, before the credits start rolling over footage of him dancing to one last song.
In May 2007, I answered an advertisement in Time Out from Graeme Montgomery, whom I know now to be an extremely talented professional photographer. He was compiling a book of nudes and wanted to photograph the first 100 people to answer the advert so I thought ‘why not?’ and went along and found that I was number one! Strangely enough, two other photographers advertised in the following two issues of Time Out, this time for people to pose for portraits, and they both photographed me subsequently. That was that for a while until, in February 2008, I answered an advert in our local newspaper from a student, Daisy Lang, who wanted to photograph people with illnesses for her final year’s project. Subsequently, I discovered that there were many photographers advertising on the Internet for models for particular projects. I wrote an email to the first photographer explaining that I was 57 and had Parkinson’s Disease and that ‘I wanted to continue on my path of being photographed by different people during the course of my illness’. Suddenly, as I wrote those words, I realised that I had my own project.
Since then, over 290 different photographers have photographed me and it has been incredibly interesting and exciting as I have seen the project develop day by day. I have met many wonderful, skilful people many of whom, normally, I would never have met let alone spent several hours with them.
It has been a fascinating journey. I have always loved photography but never had the patience or skill to practice it successfully. However, being a model has enabled me to collaborate with brilliant practitioners of the art and to be part of the artistic photographic process.
The film really captures Tim's sense of freedom and childish nature. The shots that aren't of Tim vary between landscapes and small location details - such as people swimming, lifeguard stations, bandstands, paddle boarders, seabirds... all of which - despite this being a film about Tim - helps to create a sense of place about the location in which he dances.
No comments:
Post a Comment