Feeling safe, being able to depend on someone to protect you, to look after you, to be there when you need him or her. In many of his pictures, the photographer’s personality is immediately present; his photos show people big and small, strong and weak, young and old, interacting with each other with great care, respect and affection. A child clings to her father’s leg, unwilling to let him go; a Nigerian baby is safely tucked away in his sling while his mother is pounding grain; a father shows his little son how to feed the pigeons on Trafalgar Square. In the shade of a gasometer, a girl safely crosses a street in Nine Elms, London, holding on to her mother’s hand. Tender loving care can also mean being carefully washed, no matter whether it is a porcupine at London Zoo licking her young, or a Burmese boy having his head shaved to avoid head lice.
Suschitzky finds love, trust and warmth even in the dreariest of circumstances, as, for instance, in the Glasgow slums where a woman is feeding her baby. One of the reasons the Sardinian shepherd is pampering the smallest sheep in his herd may well be that it is going to provide him with wool and milk from which to make lovely cheese. Sometimes there is a little irony involved, as in the choice of a title such as Milk Bar p. 88 or in the photographer’s description of an encounter in Malaysia: “A lot of Chinese have settled there. In the small town of Kuala Krau I surprised these dog washers. Once I had shot the picture, I couldn’t help wondering whether the woman and her grandson had really bathed the dog simply for hygiene reasons.”