All Quiet on the Home Front is a family and personal story. It’s a story that belongs to Colin Pantall, the photographer behind this project, and his family. We’ve already talked about him some time ago while discussing The Mental Load of Motherhood — a series of photographs about motherhood. In this piece, we will also make room for Pantall’s own words, as he personally shared with us the behind-the-scenes of this project.
From the Move to Isabel’s Birth
In All Quiet on the Home Front, Pantall tells the story of how his family was built. He recounts how he and his partner moved from city to city, house to house — from Bristol to Bath. From their first apartment on the fourth floor of a dilapidated Art Deco building that had once belonged to the Beatles.
«There was nothing in Bristol for £350 a month but after looking a room in a house in St Andrews which had buckets and saucepans scattered around the living room (to catch the leaks), the very nice landlord Michael mentioned that he also had a 2 bedroom flat going in Bath; top floor with no buckets or saucepans».
His storytelling style — typically British — is reflected in the shots of this series. Genuine, direct. Some are more humorous, while others are undoubtedly more delicate and intimate. The undisputed protagonist is Isabel, the photographer’s daughter, who is occasionally captured alongside his partner Katherine, already the central figure in The Mental Load of Motherhood.
«Then Isabel was born. I co-cared for her with Katherine and she defined our worlds. These worlds both shrank and grew as our daughter became our first priority, our first point of focus. We both changed, we both lost one identity and gained another, an identity framed around parenthood, around this stranger that had come into our lives and taken it over so completely»
As we will see in the next excerpt accompanying this project, the natural element also remains crucial. The need to leave the house and experience nature, along with parenthood, serves as the common thread running through these deeply personal shots.
«I’m looking back at these images now and realizing how that escape from the exhaustive qualities of a domestic interior has a particular resonance. The natural world, even one with such a heavy human stamp as the one we inhabited, has the ability to transport you outside yourself, to ground you into something beyond the constricted imagination of a mind framed by bricks and mortar. It’s a privilege not everybody has».
