Things I've noticed

As I still don't have a computer, (if anyone's into praying please would they send one up that the insurance company stop trying to catch me out and just pay up - I know they're just doing their job but I'm no criminal and just need my tools back) posting to the lightbox is interrupted - you may have noticed. I thought I would leave you for a few days with some pictures I've taken in over the last couple of days. Simple, but seasonal.

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A window coated in condenstation, some little rivers of water making their way down the pane so you see a real thick fog, but are not sure whether it's still condensation or the winter weather outside; does the source of your confusion really lie where you thought?
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Satsumas: the little orange fruits remind me of a collection of people (segments) wrapped up together in a safe place. Hold it in your palm and wonder how it would feel if you were big enough to hold the world like that. Would it break your heart or melt you with compassion?
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Little flames on candles, always burning, always hopeful.
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Faces of friends sitting in the candlelight in my home, laughing at something ridiculous and eating food I've made, quiet looks towards each other that give away how important we each feel it is to be there together - but those glances are fleeting. Watch carefully...
*

Here's to being confused, seeking the company of friends to keep you on track and loved up, and having a time of year that's designated to treasuring those very people. A happy and peaceful Christmas.

Square or Circle?

[In response to John's comment on the last post, about being mocked for still wanting to work on film]

Here's a thing to try.

Go down to Jessops and - just for kicks - ask for some medium format polaroid film. I did this recently. It's the only time I've ever felt like I've just spoken a foreign language fluently.

Bring on the counter-revolution! These people that are reeling out of control with gadgets and wires and batteries and chargers and photoshop and flash cards and external hard drives, jpeg and RAW and white balance and more megapixels than you, if they ditch out on film they're missing something fundamental about being alive, which is this:

At our heart we are not square like the pixel, we're round, like those delicious little light sensitive grains.

Pixels serve their purpose, I know this as much as the next guy (I've made my living for years through being great in Photoshop etc. and make healthy work across both film and digi) but pixels are still square, with hard edges and sharp corners. This whole issue about film or digital gets very tedious. I like to think that those who matter will judge on the quality of image you make, not the configuration of kit you're packing.


{Today's soundtrack: Sufjan Stevens - Come On Feel the Illinoise}

Liminal

In between things...

I never wanted to be so beholden to technology as to miss using my lightbox for a few days but that's just what's happening! When it's all running smoothly it's easy to take for granted. I guess this is a good sign though, that my little adventure in www is coming to mean quite a lot.

A friend emailed me this week encouraging me not to worry about losing kit, because being a photographer is a state of mind. I'm glad she said this, just when I was feeling insecure about not having all the gadgets, although I'm not sure I'll be having a go at the project of making a pinhole camera out of my a-hole. Thanks for that back to basics suggestion honey...

Today's horrible job was filling in the insurance claim, and collecting quotes from camera suppliers. They shall remain nameless, but in future guys-behind-counters, don't patronise me about wanting to still buy a film camera just because your employers are following the herds into digital. This ordeal is bad enough as it is, and you're meant to be on my side. Ok, enough.

Oh, and another thing, this week my excellent sister took me to see DJ Shadow play his instruments. He was incredible. I told him I loved him, and a few hundred people laughed but I think he heard me. It was a diamond of a night in amongst all the coal of late. Thanks G star, you rock like that Shadow genius *****

Mountains and Molehills

Today's picture is from a project I'm doing about South African street kids. This little acrobat lives in the utter horror of a beaten, raped and glue-doped street life, yet this is what he does with an open space and an ounce of permission to use it. I have this on my wall at home and sat staring at it yesterday in the midst of my own odd aftermath.

This week I've been trying really hard to get a grip. Despite last week's initial calm response to being robbed, the impact of having the tools of my expression stolen has hit like a demolition ball in the gut, and I have hurt a lot these past few days.

But I have really tried to keep perspective and look around me at what else is still going on in the world. My house hasn't blown down in a tornado, no one has been physically attacked, and I am now over the feeling of being scared in my own home at night.

Is it all relative? I don't think so.

It doesn't do to get into the game of competitive trauma—if something rocks you to your core it's still significant, whether personal bereavement or burning toast. That's not meant to sound trite, but just to suggest (having come up against some surprising issues this last week) that if your 'relative' molehill is feeling like a mountain then there's probably good reason. Give it the attention it needs, and get help doing so because other people can be great in helping you get the real measure of it. Don't be afraid to call everthing to account. If it does you in, okay, but don't let it go unquestioned.

Thank you to everyone who has been in touch and poured a lot of love in my direction over the last week—you're brilliant. The tears are slowly drying up and I think it's going to be okay. x


{Today's soundtrack: Stevie Wonder - anything you've got!}

oh no...

I've had all my camera gear nicked. It was stolen while I was shooting a wedding - cameras, laptop, films, phone, wallet, keys, the lot.

Today, the pictures I have are those in my head, and I am wondering if I will be able to write about what I saw for the couple whose wedding I was shooting at the time. Using my words alone, can I do any justice to the memory of that day for those people who made those vows in front of those friends?

For the couple concerned, I am utterly speechless - I don't think I can string a sentence together.

Furthermore, my little world was in that case, at least I thought. But it turns out that my world is actually more embedded in the essence of close friendships and loving kindness of family who have held me together over the last couple of days. Essence can't be stolen, not that easily.

I think this: there are two choices here - one, to freeze up and let this stop everything, or two, (which I prefer) to get straight into the darkroom and print up images that remind me why I do this in the first place. I'm praying that the heart of a desperate thief melts, but know the blessings are already happening elsewhere in the amazing community of people who have gathered around to help and see a postive outcome here.

All is not lost. What were my own words? Take heart, you have everything to gain.

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}