On the 14th of January, 1985 I photographed my maternal grandfather, William Spriggs (6th William generationally of direct lineage in a row) in the photo studio of The Gateway, student paper of the University of Alberta. I was rolling my own Plus-X film in those days, being so careful with quantity that I inadvertantly re-used a roll that had already been mostly used - on a Canadian University Press junket to Abbottsford, BC. The result was a series of photographs of my grandfather over-top of exposures of the lower mainland. While initially horrified at the mistake, I came to love the accident, and was seduced by the otherworldly effect and wholly-new story that developed out of the plain images I had taken of him. There were a few single-exposure frames as well, and I have included one or two of those. The images of him have a post-modern quality, a sense of reflection. ~ timothy, April 2018

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It is now 32 years after these images were taken. Will passed away two years after he sat here for me, at 89 years of age. He was a mystery to me; a WWI pilot, a quiet English gentleman, someone largely out of touch with modernity, a man to whom I was somehow so closely related. All four of his children survive today - all but one in their 80s.