When my older brother Ashley was 18, I was five. If he wasn’t out, or working as a sound technician in dark, sticky-floored rooms, he’d host gatherings at our house when my mum and I weren’t there. He would DJ, likely mixing garage, his favourite genre. When we’d get home, and he and his friends had left, joshing and jostling into the night with fire and Stella Artois in their bellies, I’d play a favourite game of mine and hunt round the house for clues of what he’d been up to. These would come in the shape of pizza boxes in the bin, nearly-finished cans of beer and lonely, left-behind rolling papers on the kitchen table, or a record of his left out by his mixing decks. I’d run around as my imagination ran with me, stacking up the clues until I formed a story in my head.
In 2011, Ashley died from a rare form of cancer. He was 26, I was 13, and his son, my nephew Leon, was six.
Ashley’s style had been that of a typical, popular, 20-something lad. In the 1990s, and influenced by Hip-Hop culture, he’d sport baggy t-shirts and oversized hoodies, brands such as Nike, Adidas, and No Fear. And as the 2000s arrived, these were replaced with Fred Perry polo shirts and Bench ribbed knit jumpers.
There were two items in particular – an oil-spilled (we presumed from fixing a car or bike), red Adidas sweatshirt, and a blue No Fear hoodie – that resonated with me the most when he died. Those were things that I liked and could wear, and wearing his clothes was a way for me to connect with him. It was so personal. I almost felt not as well-versed with him as others, because I had only known him for 13 years, which was shorter than everyone else, other than Leon. I’ve worn the sweatshirt and hoodie so many times I now feel they’re equally a part of me as they were him. They’re almost emblematic of him – solid, reliable, and recognisable, but not attention-seeking. He was quietly confident in the humblest way.
The same process my game of clues followed echoes now in what I do with his clothing and belongings. I scan or photograph them, collecting a 2-D archive of the objects that embellished his years, existing in my hard drive rather than in our loft. I first realised the value of photographs at his funeral; we pinned hundreds of pictures of him on big corkboards to display, and they felt so significant. In 2019, I decided to study photography at university after getting into taking photos of my friends with point-and-shoot cameras, which I think was birthed from a desire to keep memories in a physical form and celebrate the people around me after losing Ashley.
When lockdown arrived halfway through my degree, it meant limited access to subjects and cameras, so I started using a scanner to scan in objects I found interesting. I began scanning Ashley’s belongings small enough to fit – CDs of mixes he’d made with handwritten labels, key rings, and his photo albums.
Scanning and photographing have been ways for me to feel comfortable with the fact that one day these items might deteriorate. I might give them to Leon or donate them to someone in need. Mainly, it’s been a process where I can feel close to him and connect with him in a way that no one else can, like wearing his clothes.
More recently, my mum showed me a fishing smock he wore as a young teenager that I hadn’t seen before, and I instantly connected with it. It’s the beautiful deep indigo blue of French workwear jackets, worn-in and faded, with some bright cartoonish swimming achievement badges sewn onto the front and sleeves. It felt too precious to wear, so it motivated me to photograph it in the same way I’d scanned his things before.
It’s nice to revisit the collection of his clothing we have in the loft and find something a bit more unfamiliar. I only do this every so often, which means I look at his things through a different lens each time, depending on where I’m at in life. The other day, I took some of his trainers out of the loft and noticed dog hair inside a pair of navy and cream Nikes, from Holly, his golden Labrador. I hadn’t noticed the hair before and it was nice to discover something new, to imagine him walking Holly and wearing these shoes as if it were a new memory.
Sometimes, it feels like I know him better now than I ever did, and I keep learning new things about him through my creative process; archiving his clothing and belongings, creating narratives about his world through threads and shoelaces, like I did as a five-year-old with those party remnants and pizza boxes.
My Mum has forged a way of connecting with him through his clothes, too: she’s close to finishing a hefty rug she’s been ragging for years, made from small hand-cut squares of six pairs of his jeans, amongst pieces of her fabric. Ashley and Mum would communicate through Post-it notes, because of him coming and going all the time. So, it was normal for there to be little written notes all over the house; monotonous, ordinary things – “I’ll be home later. Don’t worry about saving any tea for me.” At the time, the notes were just part of our day-to-day, Ashley’s communication with us, but now, they live in my head as small snippets of scenes from his life.
I’ll never be able to have a conversation with Ash again or speak to him one-on-one. So, me wearing his clothes, taking photos of them, or spending an afternoon in the library scanning his keyrings and pages from his scrapbooks feels like a conversation to me when there aren’t many other tangible things I can do to be close to him.
Pictures: Georgia Skelt
Designs: Pius Bentgens