A Walk With Robbie

My friend Robbie came to stay at the weekend, and we went for a lovely walk around Bristol docks in the late autumn sun, stopping for a while to enjoy making polaroids in an old, time-untouched place. It's nice being in a slow place, if only you let it slow you down too.


Let it be, let it be. Let each other be.


***

Noise

Life can be so noisy, even when you think you're quietly looking out of a window. I wondered why the old nerves felt frazzled, then these pictures from a bus journey through London (just three from a set of roughly 100) explained it clearly. They are not manipulated in any way, just shown exactly as the view was shot.


Overload is stealthy—it comes up and bites from nowhere because it banks on our blindness to act as it's shield. But I guess like the ancient tai chi, use these images to harness the strength of your enemy, turning it around and back out again. Search for rhythm and space, find your place in the scene and enjoy life on its move again.



{today's soundtrack: little birds tweeting and a calm breeze}

Lois

I love Lois. I'm sometimes afraid to interrupt her if I see her out walking in town, partly because I think she may not remember me, and partly for the very reason that I love her, which is this: Lois is a person who - just by her very presence - will not let you get away with half-living. She invests meaning in every step, looks around and really sees things, and her careful words emerge from hours of solitude and silence. If you do engage with her it has to be in honesty and with depth. You can't really get away with a gift-wrapped life when Lois is asking the questions which, for a woman approaching 90, shows richness of the kind I hope I have if I manage to reach that age too.


Fears of not being remembered are silly. It's been a few years since we last spoke, but I saw her recently and she came over and gave me a beautiful, warm, peace-filled hug, then immediately told me how exhilarating it had been going to the huge Bonfire Night fireworks display in Bristol the night before. She walked up to the park on her own, but enjoyed having thousands of companions there in the crowd, not feeling lonely or afraid. She really lives, working hard to ensure nothing gets switched off or dusty through lack of care or attention.


I love Lois. Just by her very presence you cannot get away with half-living. She won't tolerate it.


{Today's soundtrack on request: Glen Campbell - Wicheta Lineman}

For a Friend

As you are finding yourself at the lowest point, take heart: you have everything to gain. That is the essence behind the words that follow here, and they're for you specifically - from me to you, some aged blessings. You may not know or care about the person who first spoke them, but that doesn't matter really for now, just take them as you find them.

Take heart, you have everything to gain. x

***

Blessed are those people who grieve;
They will find comfort.

Blessed are those people who are humble;
The earth will belong to them.

Blessed are those people who are merciful;
They will be treated with mercy.

Blessed are those people whose hearts are pure;
They will see god.

Blessed are those people who make peace;
They will be called god's children.

Blessed are those people who are treated badly for doing right;
They belong to the kingdom of heaven.


{today's soundtrack: Nitin Sawhney - Human}

2 nuns and a canoe

There's no punchline, it's just great, look: Tymawr

(By the way, this isn't my photograph, in case you were wondering.)

Would rather be...

...involved in shameless procrastination, using dreamy photographs as an excuse to avoid concentrating on complicated layouts and responsible project management type decisions that today demands, unapologetic in my being seduced away from it for a moment by some simple but pleasant aesthetics. Sharing it somehow makes this ok.




[ *** sigh ]

Aren't bikes great? I rode mine to (relatively new) work place yesterday for the first time, got soaking wet and couldn't see for riding too fast against the rain, nearly got squashed between a Fiesta and a dirty cement lorry and got bad butt-cheek burn, but it still beats sitting in a traffic jam.

My friend Lorna says it's ok to fuel yourself for work by not doing work so today's lightbox is dedicated to her!

I can smell cat litter. I don't have—or even like—cats. Is it me? Hope not. I really must do these layouts...


{Today's soundtrack: Aim - Flight 602}

light : 01

There has been a vogue for lightless photography for some time now. By this I mean photography which makes an effort to create emotional distance, a non-partisan account of a scene, by stripping away various accents of visual language such as lighting, angle of view, vivid colour use, even facial expression.

Richard Avedon explains it by saying that he has 'worked out of a series of no's—no to exquisite light...etc' implying that—in making portraits—he wants to view the plain surface of a person, and what it gives away of his relationship with them via the camera. So he developed a simple, routine method of lighting his subjects that was applied in all his work. (Even so, you can still recognise an Avedon portrait the way one might recognise a familiar accent.)

Since he said this, the scene has become utterly flooded with photographers who work in colour on medium/large format, choose flat light for their subject, stand at a full-length distance and wait until beyond the last hint of expression before shutter release and capture of - well, of what? A person I have no access to. I find it difficult to differentiate between the accents in this type of work, from one photographer to another, and find the aloofness unappealing. Unlike, on the other hand, the originators, who are individually fascinating—Gursky, Adams, Eggleston—because they aren't trying to remain impartial and aloof. They still want to communicate in their own accents while searching with a democratic eye.

I understand that 'exquisite light', as much as seductive chunks of vivid colour, can be a distraction from the bare honesty of a person or a thing when you're trying to tell the plain truth. But truth (oh, here we go) isn't always objective is it? Especially not where people are concerned. I also know that the lightless habit is about photographers not wanting to presume an opinion, they'd rather we look and make our own minds up (an excuse for unresolved thought?). But I like exquisite light in photographs, it dares me to look in the first place, and it also dares me to do something about the fact my heart is beating faster when I see the life moving in a person or a thing because of that light.

Light can describe passion, so for now while I try to figure this out, I'm going to let myself be seduced by it.

[I'll post more thoughts about this - look out for future numbered episodes. And about today's soundtrack, the perfect tunes to accompany a long run after my darkroomed S.A.D. on Friday, flying over the Clifton Suspension bridge with light bouncing off the River Avon underneath and across the city - now tell me light means nothing...]


{today's soundtrack: The Bees - Free the Bees}

"this modern love breaks me"

As a medicine for Seasonally Affective Disorder, a day in the darkroom doesn't rank so highly. Today's soundtrack really did save my life though, so it gets more thought than my photos of the day.

Bloc Party's 'Modern Love' trips with tension. The tension is between knowing what you should do but being unable to match that with what you feel, confessions of fragility when an act of strength is required or expected, desperation to be understood and not left emotionally floundering alone - it's all there:

"this modern love breaks me"

In daring honesty, I can think of people I would play that song to, even very recently, because the lyrics and stream of guitar chords and palpitatious rhythm articulate a confusion between love and fear way better than any of my tongue-tied efforts.

Sometimes a darkroom is a kind of secret shelter where ideas and thoughts have the privacy and time they need to emerge. But today, there I was, alone under safe light, with stinky chemicals twisting up through the air onto my clothes and face, and no sense of purpose-filled time except that images did appear in the trays. Shut off like this away from daylight and people I - unusually - felt the fear of isolation sneak in, the old opportunist, perhaps to do with recent situations where I wasn't sure if I'd done or said the right thing. Almost as though the soundtrack sensed things couldn't continue like that, it powered itself out, and then, there, it had all been said, triumphant in its beautiful but painful honesty. I didn't feel alone anymore, and I also felt better for those recent times when I have braved being honest.

Find a song that says it better than you can and play it for someone else.

Kitchen Sink

Washing up is a great leveller, and can be as comforting as hearing Trevor McDonald read the news. Surface simplicity with no hidden agendas.

A friend of mine has been writing about contemplative prayer and how to go about it. It's complicated, but really straightforward at the same time. It's complex because it involves getting beyond the constant chatter that crashes around inside the head, a kind of ego management that you realise goes the opposite way to the survival mechanism most of us have running as auto-pilot, most of the time. That auto-pilot sounds a bit like this:

"I'm right, I'm right, I'm right, I have to be right or I'll look stupid or maybe not stupid but even so, it's still nice to be right and I'm only doing what I think is best"

Contemplative prayer takes you above and beyond obsessing like this and is therefore why washing up comes to mind, because you're not even doing what's best, you're just doing. You're not right, you just are. You don't look stupid, you're just looking. For a bowl's worth of water, you don't have reason to engage in ego management (unless you fall into competitive scrubbing), you are just performing a little ritual cleansing.

Thought for the Day: Washing up is good for the soul.

{no soundtrack today except a ticking clock, from which I had to break off the second hand as it was too loud.}

"god bless america"

The Right Rev Tom Butler, Bishop of Southwark, said it best in his R4 Thought for the Day this morning, (The Today Programme, 7.50am). Listen Again

Alternatively, this: there are some 12-steppers living in a big house down the road from me, and—as often happens—I can hear them out in the garden doing their primal scream therapy. Go on boys, SCREAM! I hope those noises make it all the way over the Atlantic this morning as The US goes to poll.

(This photograph shows a little friend of mine who helps me be honest about what I'm feeling. Thanks R.)

Bonfire

Special times out west tonight on a day of more ridiculous news headlines. I felt really cross and sad that we still hang people in the name of justice, but glad to be sending this quiet fire up with friends on bonfire night and watch it drift way out east on the prevailing wind.

Oh, and Dave's rockets rocked too...






{today's soundtrack: Cymande - Nyah Rock}

Hoods

I've been working with teenagers a bit recently, both at a Youth Club and teaching at a Further Education college. Reading the ASBO letters in today's Times made me think:

Teenagers with their hoods up aren't necessarily trying to disguise themselves ready for criminal activity. They are unsure of themselves, afraid of getting things wrong, being put on the spot and stuck for a good answer where ideas of life are concerned. Who are they most convinced by as role models? Their politicians behave like animals, their music heroes are driven by anger, frustration and confusion, where wisdom - which resists fashion - is hard to find.

Gentle people of faith and integrity attempt balanced dialogue in the wings but the shouty tits and farce of tabloids drowns them out, and there is zero tolerance on soul in the Temples of Shopping - our new religious institutions.

If I was a teenager, I'd want to put my hood up while I tried to figure all this out, and if anyone tried to make me take it off I'd probably growl.

These pictures are of some teenagers whose growls I like a lot. They have some good ideas, are socially engaged and make great music. The camera helped us be a bit more honest with each other, so I look at the little contact images of them and wonder what they're telling me, what questions they have and what they want from us.

I'll put more pictures up as I print them with links to another site I'm working on - look out for anything related to 43million.

Until then, my thought for the day would be this: if a hood is a shelter, well, we all need a bit of that don't we?


{today's soundtrack: Leftfield's 'Swords' from Rhythm and Stealth}

Little Treasures

We—Steve, Lorna and I—spent Sunday morning in my sitting room making polaroids with a big, chunky beast of a medium format camera. I wanted to capture the special combination of people, surroundings and light.

Polaroid is expensive, so it makes you think before pressing the shutter. This combined with using a huge camera slows the whole experience down completely and asks for your close attention, which feels like an appropriate translation of the gentle friendships we share.

Of course, you reap immediate harvest ripping out the sheet from behind the camera, with a little print ready to go. I like having these prints very much. The alternative would be files downloaded never printed, or negs— undeveloped for weeks—waiting to be printed up. Somehow neither of those options demonstrate enough respect for the souls involved, so instead I stick my ten carefully shot prints in a book the following evening and enjoy them.

Little treasures - both my friends and the polaroids of them.


{today's soundtrack: Feeder - Comfort in Sound}