Our story

Sarah and Stephen are siblings who grew up 10,000 miles apart in England and Australia – unknown to each other, as if in a parallel universe.

Until he was 50, Stephen, a London-based photographer, took it for granted that he was an only child. Then, out of the blue, he discovered a half-sister on the other side of the world in Adelaide.

When Stephen made first contact with Sarah in 2016, they were astonished to find that not only did they look startlingly alike but photography was a central part of their lives too.

As Sarah and Stephen explored each other’s archives, a string of uncanny coincidences began to emerge.

32 years earlier, for his photography degree show at Leicester’s University De Montfort, Stephen had taken a double-exposed self-portrait in a wheat field (above, left). When Sarah began her diploma studies at Adelaide’s Centre for Creative Photography, she took a similar double-exposure of herself (right) in the Adelaide Hills.

After the initial shock of finding so many overlaps in their respective portfolios, Sarah and Stephen began Synchronicity – their first collaborative project.

Stand-alone photographs taken by the siblings before they knew of each other are now blended into montages that weave their previously compartmentalised lives into a dream-like narrative.

. . . . . . . . .

London, 3 May 2016: For several weeks, Stephen has been writing a ten-page letter to his half-sister Sarah. They share the same father, but have never met. Sarah is still unaware that Stephen exists.

After seven drafts, Stephen folds the letter into a package with his birth certificate and photos. At the post office, his pulse quickens as he pays extra for international tracking to ensure the package arrives safely in Adelaide.

As an only child, Stephen would love to have a sister. But all family histories are complex: Families grow, evolve, disperse. Not every previously-unknown or long-lost relative wants to be reached out to.

“When I reached 50, I assumed my life had been mapped out for me,” says Stephen. “That was my lot, no siblings.”

“Out of curiosity, I began to research my father’s past. He disappeared without trace when I was just four months old. I made enquiries to USA, Sweden, Spain and Australia. When I discovered a half-sister, it was a life-changer for me – I was intimately connected to someone I hadn’t even known about.”

Over the next week, Stephen logs on daily to track his letter’s progress. It flies via Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney before reaching Adelaide. “When the tracker confirmed delivery to Sarah’s door, I was so excited,” says Stephen. “Yet incredibly nervous too. Maybe I wouldn’t hear back? Or she might reject me?”

Adelaide, 10 May 2016: After an eight-hour shift as a paediatric doctor at an Adelaide hospital, Sarah drives home to the suburbs. After all those broken bones, burns and cuts, she needs strong coffee.

Back home, Sarah opens the side door to put the washing out. On the side step is a package.“ I picked it up and saw it was from London,” recalls Sarah, “which I thought was weird, I didn’t order anything from London…” 

Sarah puts the washing aside, opens the package. The next two hours pass in a blur. 

“A letter from a half-brother… called Stephen!? I flipped open a large folder with documents, photos and references all about my Dad… our Dad.” 

“I was surprised but not shocked. I grew up knowing large parts of my father’s story were missing. He’d embellished his past and left out vital details. I gave up asking him many years ago to tell me. Yet I never dreamt I had a half-brother.” 

“I was so delighted to find Stephen. He was a missing piece in the puzzle. When I realised he took photos too, like me, I felt an instant connection.” 

That evening, Sarah logged onto Facebook and reached out to Stephen.  

On the margins 

In the first of a series of coincidences that interweave like the helix of a DNA string through Sarah’s and Stephen’s lives, their passion for photography evolved out of difficult childhood experiences. 

“I was born partially deaf,” says Stephen. “So, I grew up a shy, awkward child – unable to follow people talking in groups or noisy places. I had a secure middle-class childhood, yet always felt on the margins.”

“As my father wasn’t around when I grew up, I was an only child too, which added to my introspective nature. I’d invent games that involved dialogue with imaginary siblings.”

On Australia’s east coast, Stephen’s now incognito father had remarried and Sarah was born in 1970, nine years after Stephen, in Brisbane.

“My childhood was a series of unpredictable and wrenching moves from one Australian state to another,” says Sarah. “I went to 14 different schools. Always making and quickly losing friends. Each time we moved, my treasured possessions got tossed in the bin. Of my entire childhood, I have very few photos – less than a roll of film.” 

Both Sarah’s and Stephen’s attraction to photography evolved out of feelings of displacement.

“By the time I was 18, I felt more at ease behind my Fuji camera,” says Stephen. “Photography was more accessible than talking to people around me. I converted my family’s bathroom into a makeshift darkroom for all-night sessions, churning out black-and-white prints.”

“After being on the road for so long, I finally settled down in Adelaide,” says Sarah. “At 18, I bought my first camera, a Pentax. I’d spend hours in the darkroom, often until midnight, feverishly printing. I found memories could now be turned into something tangible, printed onto a beautiful piece of paper. Something I could own, keep and treasure.”

Uncertain futures

The siblings considered their futures: “Deep down, photography called to me,” says Stephen. “Everything else in life felt like a chore, but making images was effortless.” In 1984, Stephen graduated in photography and graphic design at Leicester’s University De Montfort.

Despite opting to study medicine at University of Adelaide, Sarah felt a similar pull: “When I was 8, Dad gave me a subscription to National Geographic magazine. It was the best present he ever gave me. I dreamt of being a documentary photographer. So, in the middle of my degree, as I despaired of the medical school treadmill, I made a 6-week photography trip around Europe. It allowed me to wander the streets and feel anonymous. I loved the frost, the leaves on ancient walls, the old people in their winter coats, the candles fluttering in tiny churches.”

“When I realised I loved making images far more than studying anatomy or biochemistry, my short break in Europe became a whole gap year. I loved the freedom of hopping onto a train and just going anywhere I felt like.”

Astonishingly, for six weeks in 1991, Sarah lodged in Harrow, London, just 12 miles from Stephen’s own north London home. 

“I thought maybe I could quit medicine and become a documentary photographer?” recalls Sarah. “But, back in Australia, I was discouraged when people insisted it was just a hobby and would never make a proper career.”

So, Sarah graduated as a paediatric doctor and began work at a children’s hospital.  Uncannily, by this time, Stephen’s trajectory as a freelance photographer had also been deflected into a career with children and young people.  

As marriage, kids and career took over Sarah’s and Stephen’s respective lives, the photographic seeds lay dormant.

“Yet photography was an itch that never went away,” says Stephen. “20 years later, in 2011 with the arrival of digital cameras, I finally got back into it.”

Likewise, Sarah: “Around this same time, I bought a DSLR and a tiny mirrorless camera.I loved the immediacy of it. So, I enrolled at Adelaide’s Centre for Creative Photography. It was like a dream come true, taking photography classes surrounded by other people who loved it too.”

By 2014, Sarah and Stephen were uploading hundreds of photos to their respective Instagram sites – although not using their real names, and still unaware of each other.     

“Just after my 50th birthday, I had a sort of ‘mid-life crisis’ – as you do – and reviewed my life,” says Stephen. “I knew I should be grateful for all I had – family, career. But there was still this nagging question about what happened to my father.”

“After five years of research, one thing led to another. I finally located my father in Australia and mailed the package to Sarah.”

. . . . . . . . .

Mirror images

After exchanging their first texts, Sarah and Stephen were too far apart to meet up. To ease the bonding process, they began to text their photo archives to each other.

“It’s unreal how fast digital images whizz in a split-second from one side of the planet to the other,” says Sarah. “The speed those pixels travel has kind of defined our sibling relationship ever since.”

Over the next six months, Sarah and Stephen compiled a series of ‘mirror images’ – where each had shot similar subjects in a similar style.

The mirror images reflect how two siblings had independently explored the visual language of street and observed photography – composition, line, colour, light, perspective.

Previously these images were an individual record of a specific point in time and location. Now they form a synchronous dialogue between two separate moments and places.

Taken in isolation, you might lightly praise each shot as tasteful or artistic. Yet when combined in the context of Sarah’s and Stephen’s story, they acquire an extraordinary poetic charge.

“The more startling coincidences emerged,” says Sarah, “the more Stephen and I saw a future project emerge.”

Synchronicities

Sarah and Stephen began to push the mirror images to another level by merging them into dream-like montages – each with an autobiographical context. Their first effort, Tree Shadows (below) sets the template.

When it’s spring in London, it’s autumn in Adelaide. As Sarah shot a jacaranda tree’s shadow near her home, she was unaware that same month Stephen took a similar one of a plane tree just a long his home street. As the eye reads the montage from left to right, the two images flit from colour to mono, from opaque to translucent layers – horizontal movements that ripple like sea waves across the paving stones. The full colour is physically present, the mono is softer, dream-like, as if it is there and isn’t there at the same time. Neatly symbolising (at the time the individual shots were taken) Sarah’s and Stephen’s unknowing presence (or absence) in each other’s lives.

As a tentative first effort at capturing the synchronicity at the heart of Sarah’s and Stephen’s lives, Tree Shadows opened out a range of new creative possibilities.

“The project has evolved over time,” says Stephen. “We didn’t start with any grand plan. Or even any intention of taking photos for it. We’ve been led by the coincidences already gifted to us.” 

“It’s more a process of curating images,” agrees Sarah, “of exploring their aesthetic and emotional resonances. As if the photos themselves are guiding us. And surprising us too.”

Coda

Since the project began, Stephen has flown to Adelaide to meet Sarah and his other half-sister Lexie who also lives there. The three share another paternal half-brother Robert from Idaho, USA.

Sarah and Stephen have now done joint photowalks with a view to future projects. Otherwise, their respective family lives make it impractical to relocate and live nearer to each other.

“Even so, we keep in regular contact online,” says Stephen. “We catch up with family news, critique each other’s photos and take pride in the other’s breakthroughs.”

For three years running, Sarah was a finalist at HeadOn – Australia’s biggest annual photo festival. In 2019, she won first prize (mobile category) at the FIPP International Photography Portrait Prize.

Stephen was finalist in Lens Culture’s Afar travel awards and the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain 2018.

“At times, it can be an emotional wrench for us that we’re so far apart,” adds Sarah. “We’d love to do the usual things other siblings do. Just pop over for coffee, things like that. But photography and online sharing is a medium through which that distance blurs.”

“It feels like the journey has only just begun,” says Stephen. “We plan to further explore synchronicity as a creative process.”

“What’s magical about the process of blending photos into montages is how it results in unexpected discoveries.”

“Each new montage is an unplanned surprise that neither of us could have achieved alone,” concludes Sarah. “Each renews that same initial excitement we both felt about finding each other.”