It is not often that a father has an intense bond with his daughter and tries to understand her on a deeper level. Maybe you have to be a photographer for that because then while shooting, you become more aware of the mystery that an adolescent daughter can be.  

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Raymond Meeks took pictures of his daughter during the period when she was growing up, moving out into the world - she was going to study in New York City - and leaving behind the period in which she was closed off and dependent on the advice of her parents. Meeks not only took pictures of his daughter Abigail but much more often of locations where she apparently hung out, in nature. The nature shots show peaceful village-like scenes in which a child can feel entirely at home and protected. They are almost all black-and-white shots with soft transitions in the grey tones, probably to indicate the child's past.  The closed nature of the photos - fragments of the environment - is probably metaphorical for his daughter's adolescence. Occasionally, there are also photographs of Abigail, staring ahead into an unknown future or lost in thought.

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The Somersault book is an aubade to the father-daughter relationship, to the acceptance of the child's misunderstood adolescence and the security of youth.
Raymond Meeks writes at the end of the book: “The portrait of my daughter reproduced on this book’s cover reflects a transition I both resisted and longed for. In this moment, a daughter ceased trying to please her father, which went against her every impulse leading up to the release of the shutter, and then regathered on the other side of this instant.”
And daughter Abigail writes in the afterword: “I am not this girl anymore – this seventeen-year-old who is terrified and confused and deeply self-involved.”
The book is a gem with a particular binding of the pages: they are all folded.

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Somersault, Raymond Meeks, Publisher Mack, 2021, £ 35.00

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