Not much has changed!

Julie Joy Clarke, Official school photo at St. Joseph's Catholic School in Hawthorn, 1957?

Sometime during the 1980s I found a 60 cm high statue of Mary in white veil and blue and white robes at the local op shop adjacent to the Immaculate Conception Church in Hawthorn. It was 1950s style and must have originally been located in one of the local Catholic Schools, convent or presbytery. I bought the statue and carried it carefully in my arms all the way down Glenferrie Road until I was home. The statue is currently located in my bedroom. A few years ago a friend of mine who almost became a Catholic Priest wanted to buy the statue, because it was undoubtedly an antique and it doesn't have one chip on its surface; but I just couldn't part with it, not because I am a Catholic (I gave up all forms of religious belief at the age of twelve), but because I'm sure that it's exactly the same statue in this photograph taken at my first school - St. Joseph's Catholic School in Hawthorn. I think that we need tactile links to the past. I've only recently started liking this photo. I use to hate the fact that I had a gap in my two front teeth and my fringe was crooked (I've tried to fix it up in Photoshop). But now, as I look at it I like my messy and crumbled shirt collar, the writing that is just visible scrawled across the knuckles of my left hand, the statue of Mary who appears to be looking over my shoulder like some benevolent guardian and the immense map of the world in the background, with Australia just behind my right ear. After viewing the photograph I posted yesterday, Aliey, a Facebook friend of mine was prompted to remember how she felt about seeing for the first time after her father died, a photograph of him when he was eight years old. He never spoke about his past and so when she saw the photo of him she was able to reconcile the man with the child. She remembered this amidst physical pain that she is currently suffering. I not sure what can be said about this photo of me - perhaps in that moment I was happy - framed by the world and my writing on the exercise book in front of me. Not much has changed.