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| July 2002 |
I remember when my pregnant bestie rang me in 1997 to tell me she was having twin boys. I'd just bought one gigantic and expensive Garfield stuffed toy dressed as a Chinese Emperor for what I imagined was her solo baby. According to the shop attendant it was the last one in the shop, probably the universe, so the twins would have to share. From that moment on I thought of them as a pair and bought them things in twos, including their first film cameras when they were four years old, and their first digital cameras when they were seven.
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| April 2003 |
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| April 2003 |
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| March 2004 |
They were fraternal twins, but when they were little they were so very alike, especially from the back as they ran away. For me it was only as they got older, well past the toddler stage, that their differences became more apparent both in appearance and personality. They were the same but different and we spoke of them together in the same breath; calling them both by the same strange hyphenated combination of their names.
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| August 2005 |
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| March 2007 |
I did a birthday portrait of the boys when they turned ten. I had of course taken many photos of them over the years (as you can see) but ten seemed such a milestone that something more formal was called for. I put them on two Bali-style chairs in front of a wall at the farm and shot away until I got this:
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| October 2007 |
It became the iconic shot of these brothers, to be replicated each birthday. Don't worry, the rest of the family never ever missed out. By now the family home was looking a little like the Louvre.
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| October 2007 |
In March of 2010 I shot the whole family together and it included this photo of the boys. They were twelve, on the verge of an age where they would begin to compete for space in the world and the attention of their family and peers as true individuals. What I see when I look at this photo is a shared moment of closeness such as can only be between siblings that shared a womb. I hear their mother's heart beating while they wait to be born.
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| March 2010 |
And then suddenly they were thirteen; scary, hairy teenagers growing up way too fast (for their parents and me anyway) and ready to launch on an unsuspecting world. My bestie and I drank a lot of red wine that year. We still do.
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| October 2010 |
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| July 2011 |
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| October 2011 |
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| October 2012 |
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| October 2012 |
When the boys turned sixteen in October of 2013 the Brashness and I were in Hawaii so we missed the annual birthday shot. We returned to bad news about my mother so everything in my life was put on hold, including my photography. A few days after mum's death I took my bestie and her family out on the beach near my family home for a portrait to remind myself of all the reasons that I had to keep on living.
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| April 2014 |
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| April 2014 |
So for the first time in an 'official' family portrait session, I shots the boys on their own.
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| April 2014 |
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| April 2014 |
I still broke out the Bali chairs and took these shots.
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| October 2014 |
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| October 2014 |
I'd like to say it was just for their mother, or for the sake of comparison over the years. But secretly, it was for me. That shot has always been for me. Happy Birthday brothers, you make me as proud as if you were my own.
