With Sam Hancock, winter of 1986/87
Thomas and Sam with Robert below
On a stone wall in George's Lane. Thomas (left) and Sam have been friends for a long long time. Sam's father Mike Hancock and I have known each other for a long time. In the winter of 1986, Robert was coming up to five the next April and Thomas was seven. His bike jumper was hand-knitted by Grandma (Alice, Sandra's mother, my mother-in-law).
I think my grandson Elliot looks very much like his mother Olivia (as well as being recognisably Thomas's son). It's often in the expressions. The striking thing about this photo is not just how much Thomas can look like Elliot but also how much Robert looks like Elliot. It really is all in the expressions. It carries through to old age as well – because the older you get, the more you look like your brother or sister, and your father and mother when they were the same age. It's all part of evolution.
It's also why portrait paintings from the days before photography tend to be an approximation only and rarely an exact likeness. If you want to know what the Duke of Wellington looked like you need to look at several portraits of him because the sitter could never hold a particular expression throughout a whole sitting (let alone several sittings). There is no such thing as a sitting in photography. Having said that, in this photograph it's hard to know whether Sam looks more like his father or mother. I would need to see him now, or a photo of his mother and father when they were only seven.
