On Terminal Illness: The Dad Project by Briony Campbell

“Dad left the hospital bed in the living room empty, when he returned to the hospice. I think the others found it strange that I slept in it.” – Briony Campbell.
(Credit: Briony Campbell)

“Being a good daughter to my dying dad was tricky,” says photographer Briony Campbell on her 2009 photo series, The Dad Project, which chronicles her father David Campbell’s end of life battle against cancer. The London-based artist was in her final year of study at the London College of Communication when it became clear her father wouldn’t survive his cancer diagnosis. In that moment, Campbell realized photography could open up an intimate opportunity for catharsis in the final months of his terminal illness.

“I struggled to find the balance between dedication to his needs and distraction from my grief,” she writes on her website, “
[because] at first the idea of introducing a camera into [the] equation seemed unwise, but eventually I think it became the solution [as he neared death].”

Credit: Briony Campbell

Campbell’s lens captures cancer with an honest narrative eye, and her shots alternate between full, cinematic compositions of family members and unforgiving close-ups of bottles, straws – even strands of fallen hair. We’re seeing cancer as it’s echoed in objects; cancer as it begins to change the entirety of a family’s perspective.

“I struggled to find [a] balance…”

Credit: Briony Campbell

Consider the image in which a single, empty glass sits on a lawn. Outside of its context, the image doesn’t scream “cancer.” Our knee-jerk thought says summer picnic. The lone glass, we think, is an artifact of a carefree afternoon. But when put into the narrative context of The Dad Project, the glass becomes a foreboding reminder of terminal illness and a loss soon to come. Additionally, Campbell’s lens is positioned directly above the hollow of the glass – and in that moment, we realize we’re forced to make eye contact with a yet another void. Campbell feels her world emptying in every aspect – it’s pervasiveness with no restraint.

Briony’s father, David.
(Credit: Briony Campbell)

Then there’s the picture of a spilled milkshake. It’s one of those moments of error and small casuality that magnifies itself in an intense setting. The pink splatter tells not only a literal story of her father’s everyday life with cancer, but expresses an instance of unapologetic aggression and frustration that is important to the photo series’ arc. “I couldn’t [immediately] be a photographer when [it] happened,” writes Campbell of the photo, “I was a daughter. [And] after I’d swept up the glass I paused, for what felt like a long while, before managing to photograph the milkshake stain. Perhaps I’d proved (to myself or my parents? I’m not sure which was the necessity) that I was a daughter before a photographer.”

“Perhaps I’d proved that I was a daughter before a photographer.”

The Dad Project is more than just a family diary of David Campbell’s life with cancer – it’s a helping, empathetic hand to others who have, or will, fight a terminal illness like cancer. “This is the story of an ending without an ending,” reflected Campbell after her father’s death,
” And I hope it always will be.
This is my attempt to say goodbye to my Dad.”

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