Eviction

This image was one of the most personally affecting images I've taken.
Last year I decided to document the eviction of one of my neighbors, as Evictions happen frequently in the block, and
I had long experience of the circumstance that lead up to eviction back from when i was a child.
Growing up the court bailiffs often came to my family home, my father was threatened with Eviction for non payment of what was then known as Rates, these were taxes paid separately to the local councils, and now are known as council tax.
After taking a photograph of the notice of eviction posted on the front door of my neighbor I did not see her again, but I decided to document the eviction because so many people are unaware of the process, and it triggered a deep personal empathy.
But when it came to posting the photographs I found I just could not, its taken the best part of a year to work through it, and now I can deal with the issues it brought back to me from the past.
After I had realized that summers day, that the lorry parked on the grass under my window had come to collect all my neighbors possessions, and take them to be either sold off, or destroyed at the landfill site, I grabbed my camera,
and took this image from the kitchen window,
Later that very night I found I could not leave the image as it was,
it was for me too real,
too close for comfort,
So I altered it, until all the colour had gone, till it looked back at me as just an image, but in doing that I edited it not out of choice, or for objective photographic integrity, but purely to stop the impact it evoked in me, hardly good photojournalism or documentation.
Since then and through therapy i have learned the power of opening up, of showing my scars, and I feel more in control of my life,
and more able to respond to other lives around me with out getting them tangled in old wounds.
In the 1960tys when the bailiff came to the door, he threatened to take away everything, to a small child that means, everything,
it was years before i realized he did not mean my toys, my broken necklaces, my ripped and stained clothes, my scuffed shoes.
He came back with a van, to collect a table, some chairs, he walked in to and out of every room, and my parents hid in plain sight squabbling in the garden, they could not face life, whilst I did not know what to make of it.
My neighbour disappeared no one here knows where or what happened to them after the eviction notice went up ( the locks were also changed by the bailiffs that day so no one could get in, other than them)
now the property has been re-let.

I admire photographers who can be unemotional about their subjects, who can take and keep, a step back from the picture frame,
but i am not made that way, even though i often don't want to be I am somehow somewhere in the picture.