You Only Die Once

You Only Die Once started with my dissertation for a Documentary Photography programme at university and has continued on till now. It is a visual diary of my visits to the home of my friends who showed me their day-to-day battles with life, with unemployment, sickness and sometimes hostility. I met Roger’s parents in Poland. I remember them telling me this touching story about their poor life in Poland before they made a move to the UK, about their sons eating only bread with onion at times, because that was all they could afford to give them. They told me about their harsh beginnings in the UK, that sounded so familiar to my own life struggling to settle and make my way in the UK and, in a way, I felt my pictures of their life would somehow also reflect my personal experiences. Over the years when I photographed the family the story started to revolve around the oldest son Roger. Roger came to the UK with his mom and younger brother in 2004 to join his father who till then had worked and lived illegally in Boston, Lincolnshire. Roger is autistic with Asperger’s syndrome, recently also diagnosed with schizophrenia. I started photographing his family in 2008. Over the span of fifteen years I visited them many times in Boston, as well as in their wooden house in Poland where the family spends their holidays.They have shared with me their plans, interests, their fears and beliefs and I have always found the warmth and love of a true family in their house. What was originally meant to be a general look at a serious subject of migration, turned out to be an intimate life story of an idiosyncratic man.