Blending his own photos with family archives, Manchester-based photographer Timon Benson explores his father's experience as a first-generation immigrant in the UK, and his own experience grappling with what it means to be a son. Together, they tell their story through a moving meditation on everyday life, displacement and attachment, fragility and strength. Here, he tells Gem Fletcher what it was like to capture their life-long bond and how the camera became a way to savor and process life's most profound moments.
“Father” was recently selected as a winner of Open Walls Arles, an award held by WePresent in partnership with the British Journal of Photography.
“To me, photography is about emotional resonance,” says photographer Timon Benson. “It’s about exploring what it is to be human and what it feels like to be alive. It gives you this incredible opportunity to decide what’s important to you every day.” In 2020, Benson and his father, John, began a collaborative series, “Father”—a deeply personal exploration of family dynamics, displacement and cross-cultural identity.
Photography gives you this incredible opportunity to decide what’s important to you every day.
Benson, who was born and lives in Manchester, is a self-taught photographer. His formative experiences with image making began at home, where he would experiment with ideas and form, utilizing his father as a willing sitter. At 19, a random trip with friends to Japan led to a profound encounter with Jiro Konami’s “Burning Drop,” Nobuyoshi Araki’s “Sentimental Journey,” “Une Double Absence” by Akihito Yoshida and Kayo Ume’s “Long live grampa.” The sensitive and poetic images contained in these Japanese photobooks changed everything for Benson, who discovered a potency in their tributes to the small details of familial relationships.
“Father” takes this sentiment, blending staged and vernacular images with family archives and unraveling a tender portrait of their father-son bond. John is a charming and lovable subject. Through images, we see him as a young man in Kenya through to the present day, socializing with Benson in pool halls and eating fish and chips on the coast. While Benson ruminates on the sentimental parts of his life, using photography as a vessel for memory, he doesn’t mask hard things, using images to trace his father’s health as well as mapping events in their family history in which he was not present.
In contrast to typical portrayals of father-son bonds—often laden with emotional distance and the pressures of machismo—Benson’s relationship with his dad has always been close. “He put an incredible amount of time and energy into me as a child,” Benson recalls. “He always made me feel special, encouraging and reassuring me.” John was always there for his son, taking him to football training every week, driving him on his paper around and instilling a strong sense of self-confidence and belief.
Like many first-generation immigrants, John’s life hasn’t been straightforward. At 23, he moved to the United Kingdom from Kenya, seeking a pathway to study, gain financial mobility and experience a new culture. “He worked his way up as a Nurse,” Benson explains. “He became an expert in mental health and went on to manage different departments. The work suited him because he’s incredibly caring. He took the job very seriously, putting in a lot of additional hours, understanding that people relied upon him and the decisions he made affected people’s lives and livelihoods.” As John got older, his health began to fluctuate, resulting in a lot of time spent in and out of the hospital. Through these challenging times, the camera gave Benson a way to deal with this overwhelming reality.
In January, after much rumination, John moved back to Kenya. His life in the UK had become quiet and isolated, accelerated by redundancy from a job he dedicated his life to. “One night, we sat together and had an honest conversation about his relationship with the two countries,” says Benson. “I reflected back to him the juxtaposition between his solitary life in the UK and his extraordinary social life in Kenya. He fills a room when he’s there, and everyone’s delighted to have him around. As he gets older, it becomes a question of where you would rather spend the rest of the time you have.”
The process of relocation wasn’t easy. As Benson puts it, “That conversation changed the course of both of our lives.” The inevitable stress of managing the logistics of his father’s move collided with a heightened state of their relationship as John began to reflect on his life in the UK and the things that were important to him. Benson felt a sense of urgency to document their everyday rituals, from breakfast in their favourite café to treasuring the final moments at home together.
This heightened state of emotion produced one of Benson’s most poignant images, “About to Leave,” a winner in our Open Walls award in partnership with the British Journal of Photography. The image, shot from outside, looking in, pictures John in a moment of reflection, standing in his living room wearing the same tie he wore when he arrived in the UK in 1990. The scale of Benson’s image—a frame within a frame—is evocative of departures, illustrating photography’s ability to stop at a moment in time and yet live on indefinitely, constantly transforming alongside us.
Being with him is such a comforting existence for me. We show each other love without telling each other.
As their relationship enters a new phase, so does the project. Benson plans to continue the work in Kenya later this year, continuing to make visible the complexities of one family’s migratory journey. “I miss him all the time,” Benson says as I ask him how he’s navigated being apart from his father. “Spending time with my dad is probably the only time that I get to switch off. Being with him is such a comforting existence for me. We show each other love without telling each other.” The baton has now been passed from father to son, and Benson is now discovering the universal experience of becoming responsible for his elders. “You’re never quite ready for roles to reverse, but he’s been such an incredible parent to me for so long; it’s now my time to step up and be an incredible son.”