On the 14th of January, 1985 I photographed my maternal grandfather, William Spriggs (6th William generationally of direct lineage in a row) in the photo studio of The Gateway, the student paper of the University of Alberta.
I was rolling my own Plus-X film in those days – 36 exposure cassettes from 100 ft rolls. I was so careful with quantity that I inadvertantly re-used a roll that had already been mostly used on a Canadian University Press junket to Abbottsford, BC. The result was a series of photographs of my grandfather over-top of exposures of the lower mainland.
While initially horrified at the mistake, I came to love the accident, and was seduced by the otherworldly effect and wholly-new story that developed out of the plain images I had taken of him. There were a few single-exposure frames at the end of the roll, and I have included a few of those as well.
~ timothy
It is now 38 years since these images were taken.
Will passed away two years after he sat here for me, at 89 years of age. He was a mystery to me; a WWI pilot, a quiet English gentleman, someone largely out of touch with modernity, a man to whom I was somehow so closely related.
Three of his four children survive today – my uncles in their eighties and my Mum now 91.
~ August 2023