During this lecture, we looked at the work of Tim Andrews, a man suffering with Parkinson's Disease since 2005, he created a project called "Over The Hill" after his diagnosis where he has his picture taken by different photographers and has featured over 134 photographers within a space of 3 years, such as, Steve Bloom, Daniel Tunstall ad Paul Hanson.
"‘Alright boys, this is it, over the hill’ is the intro of the song “Bring on Lucie” by John Lennon and, although the phrase ‘over the hill’ has somewhat negative connotations, it is announced on the record in a very positive way by Lennon who goes on to sing ‘Do it, do it, do it, do it now!’ and so, for me, the title of this exhibition is optimistic despite the double meaning.
In May 2007, I answered an advertisement in Time Out from Graeme Montgomery, whom I know now to be an extremely talented professional photographer. He was compiling a book of nudes and wanted to photograph the first 100 people to answer the advert so I thought ‘why not?’ and went along and found that I was number one! Strangely enough, two other photographers advertised in the following two issues of Time Out, this time for people to pose for portraits, and they both photographed me subsequently. That was that for a while until, in February 2008, I answered an advert in our local newspaper from a student, Daisy Lang, who wanted to photograph people with illnesses for her final year’s project. Subsequently, I discovered that there were many photographers advertising on the Internet for models for particular projects. I wrote an email to the first photographer explaining that I was 57 and had Parkinson’s Disease and that ‘I wanted to continue on my path of being photographed by different people during the course of my illness’. Suddenly, as I wrote those words, I realised that I had my own project.
Since then, over 400 different photographers have photographed and filmed me and it has been incredibly interesting and exciting as I have seen the project develop day by day. I have met many wonderful, skilful people many of whom, normally, I would never have met let alone spent several hours with them.
It has been a fascinating journey. I have always loved photography but never had the patience or skill to practice it successfully. However, being a model has enabled me to collaborate with brilliant practitioners of the art and to be part of the artistic photographic process.
I decided on "Over the Hill" as the title of the project in January 2009 but I had not discussed this with anyone until I met Roberto Foddai a few weeks later to talk about his ideas for our shoot. He produced two pieces of headgear he wanted me to wear and said that one of them had some wording on it which he felt was somewhat ironic. He turned it over and on the front were the words – ‘Over the Hill’.
Free the people, now.
Do it, do it, do it, do it now."
Tim Andrews
Here are some of his favourite images taken (these were posted in May 2017)
One of he most recent photographers asked to take his picture, is Louise Fago Ruskin.
For the images, she used a digital camera and was able to take a range of beautiful images. One of which was taken at nighttime in front of a single outdoor/garden light.
The image is stunning and the way the light illuminates only a small section of the grass, and Tim himself, instantly draws your eyes to the corner. The use of negative space/darkness makes the image extremely interesting, and in a way, adds emotion to the image - people who may be diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease may only feel darkness around them, but Tim only looked for the light and found a way to use it to his advantage and create a project, that not only highlights the issues around the disease, it helps to create more awareness and show people that people who suffer from the disease can still create, still do things they never thought they would be able to do. It helps to show that nothing is impossible.
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