seventeen and half a year

Seventeen and a Half a Year is a portrait of my son during the UK lockdown, reflecting on the transition from adolescence to adulthood within the confines of family life.

In the spring of 2020, my son Jack was seventeen. By autumn he would be eighteen. From boy to man, and for me, from the parent of a child to the parent of an adult for the last time. This transition would always have been emotional, but the global pandemic intensified its weight.

During the UK lockdown, the two-metre rule meant that only those in the same household could share close proximity. These portraits were made within that space. An enforced closeness that shaped our daily lives, while his friends and girlfriend remained out of reach.

Though rooted in my own relationship with Jack, the project reflects a wider experience of that time: the ways in which family, love, and nearness defined life under lockdown. Seventeen and a Half a Year is both personal and collective. A record of change, confinement, and the bonds that hold us together.