Ties That Bind pt 1.

Introduction

What holds a family together?

Not just an immediate family, but an extended one, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, grandparents. Is it simply geography? Why do we feel such a strong yearning to explore our family's history? Is it folly, when we’re only here for the briefest blink of time? Does it matter? Will we all eventually be lost to the sands of time? (A corny phrase, maybe — but true all the same.)

The Hattan’s

We all have friends and schoolmates, some we keep in touch with, others drift away, never to be seen again. But an extended family often seems to get drawn back together. In my case, it’s often funerals that bring us close again. That was certainly true recently. I lost my mum in 2023, and two of my closest cousins lost their mums just a couple of months before. Three deaths in close succession — and strangely, it brought us all closer.

We created a family WhatsApp group. One of my cousins even arranged a Family Christmas Party, which we repeated the following year. We spent a lot of time looking through old photos of our grandparents and great-grandparents. It’s fascinating how genetics echo down the generations. There’s a photo of my aunt taken in the late 1940s that looks eerily like a photo of her daughter taken decades later. In another picture, my grandmother shares the same facial features as one of my cousins.

Our family stretches even further. My grandfather was one of four siblings. While two stayed in Newcastle, the other two moved to London. Between them, they had 17 children, which led to sprawling branches of extended family across both cities. It’s like a network, a spider’s web of connections, quietly linking us all together.

As a photographer, I feel compelled to explore this network — to delve into our family tree, weaving together found photographs and my own images in an attempt to understand:
What is it that ties us together?

TBC….