Please don’t read this if you’re offended by explicit descriptions of sex, it’s not used gratuitously but its necessary to help paint a picture of my late, great aunt Florence Sellers who passed away in 2001 at the age of 96 …. And no this isn’t a deviate story, the opposite actually.
As a kid it’s helpful to have adults around who show a non-judgmental interest in you as an individual, and right from the start we were friends. No one tangled with Auntie Florence and went away unscathed, but she only fired up if she felt disrespected. I never felt threatened by her and was intrigued with her pluck and independence. She could put anyone in their place, so to have her as a friend was always entertaining.
Unmarried until she was in her late fifties; well past children, she secured her place in the world via a career in nursing. A matron by the age of 35; it was a position held for 41 years. It’s easy to see what she was doing, she was not going to be beholden to anyone let alone a man. Her love hate relationship with men as a gender was a real marker of her personality. A superficial reading (by some of the males and females who knew her) was she was a man-hating militant feminist. But she actually loved men and was occasionally charmed by certain individuals, but more often couldn’t swallow the status quo. From her perspective men did most of the trouble making and deserved none of their unearned privilege.
We’d go out together and one time (1992) we went to see the movie Baraka. It was an awe inspiring depiction of modernity’s effect on the natural world and human culture. Its signature was breathtaking cinematography, a Phillip Glass soundtrack, and absolutely no dialogue. When it finished and the lights were coming up, she turned to me and said “Dear, …. it said nothing …. (pause) ….but said everything.”
In 2000 she caught the bus from Brisbane to Lismore a couple of times to visit, quite a feat for a 95 year old. I’d meet her and we’d drive out to our 40 acres at Jiggi were she’d talk all day about the past and her take on life, and potter around the garden. Outspoken about everything she would often jump into the deep end of a conversation and open it with a challenging question, “ Tell me Stephen do you believe in the Immaculate Conception?” It was difficult to predict which way things were going so I learnt early that it was best to speak your mind and hope for the best.
“No not really”
“Well I do, I’ve seen it!” Her narrative was laced with stories of nursing in the slums of Sydney during the depression, WW2 service in the Solomon Islands and 1900’s rural life and there was no telling were an idea of hers had its origin. They often had a theme of man’s injustice to man but more often to woman.
If there was point to be made she’d frown and tighten her mouth as she spoke, slowly delivering the story in a lilting rhythm.
“…. you might have this young girl see, … and she’s new to the city and she meets this young fellow … and he makes her laugh, and he’s handsome, and he’s a good dancer, … and they go out and have few dances, and he offers her a lift home, … and he starts kissing her in the car, … and next thing he’s got his bloomin’ pants down and before you know it he ejaculates, and a bit of semen lands on her labia … and semens like jolly lice you know!! , next thing you know the poor girls pregnant, and she hadn’t done a thing wrong, her hyman was completely intact!.”
She caught herself and laughed at her own brazenness “Dear what must you think of me?’ I didn’t say, but I thought the world of her which she realized anyway.
The next year, around her 96th birthday she took the bus into Southbank from Sunnybank to celebrate with friends. On her way home she hopped off the bus and walked in front of a car but survived with a badly dislocated shoulder, and a broken arm. So strong was her spirit she convinced the doctors to let her go home (and continued living by herself until the last 4 months of her life). They didn’t set her arm properly so she was lop-sided and learnt to do everything with one hand.
One of the last times we visited her unit, her by that time frail, bird like form disappeared into a room and she came out with a couple of old jars and said to Simone, “now your mother looks like a sensible sort of person who’d know the value of a good jar, do you think she’d want these”? It was a touching reminder of an almost extinct value system.
A melanoma formed under her injured arm and she was gone, not without a fight, a few months later.
At that time the Lismore Regional Art Gallery announced the theme of it’s annual art prize “Living legends”, open to all genre's. I don’t usually enter competitions if the only outcome is the chance of a pat on the head and a prize or some unbelievable title, but this offered a relevant forum for an idea/feeling.
Aunties’ last gift to me was a small box that had her life summarised in a few dozen photographs, letters and certificates.
If you live, at a certain point life becomes a gradual disappearing act, and there were photo’s of Auntie as a young flapper in the 20’s, a successful professional and an ageing recipient of an BEM. Naturally I couldn’t use her as my subject though she was my inspiration. So I enquired and found two centenarians at a local Nursing home. One (Irene Compton) was the wife of the NSW Minister for Lands in the 1950”s and the other (Syd Ballard) was once the Head of the Department of Agriculture in Northern NSW. The staff with permission of the families supplied me with a few past photographs and a beautiful recent letter to Syd from someone he’d mentored at the height of his own career.
I’d bought a Hasselblad impulsively 12 months earlier and finally found a purpose for its medium format potential. Syd and Irene were photographed against a simple background in their wheelchairs, the negs were scanned and I pasted copies of a few of their mementos and the memoirs onto the wall behind them. ….. alluding to their slip into obscurity.
To make a statement about the invisibility of the aged and to give them a presence, I made the enlargements life size and displayed them as a diptych.
The judge Alison Kubler, to my astonishment picked “Syd and Irene” out as the winner, and I got the $3k prize which just about covered the printing and framing costs, but that is the lot of most who consider themselves artists.
Art Photography
(Tuesday, 12 January 2010)