Lost in the Light

This is one of my all-time favourite views, of anything, but especially this thing; more accurately, especially this sort of thing. In a forest somewhere in Wales, friends and their menagerie of little people long gone up ahead but for one littlie, who hung back with me to make pictures and look for stories together.

"Come as little children..."

Our assumed size on the planet and the rigid viewpoints we cling to might be stopping us noticing something really good. That's why I like it when the light does this to things.

This favourite sort of view is about coming down really low, getting underneath things and letting the light shine through from the other side. That is about making an effort to see things in a way you don't normally see them. It possibly involves lying down – the ultimate demonstration of powerlessness? And that is about something else too:

It is about making an assumption that you can still be surprised, delighted, enchanted, and fascinated; entertaining the possibility that you may still be enlightened. (You remember how to be enlightened, don't you?) I think you can only experience these things if you are not in control. So much emphasis of modern life is about being in control.

What is it like having humility enough to thoroughly bathe in something that you do not breathe life into?

Even on the rotting floor of a dark wood, if you're prepared to come low and go in with an open mind, even there the beauty exists. Maybe even especially there, set ringing by its context. Quiet exhilaration.

I'm only looking at turning autumn leaves, but apply it to anything in life, the principle still works.

Make yourself small and get lost in the light.

{Today's Soundtrack: Idiot Wind - Lost in the Light}

Climbing My Staircase

 

Doing an illustration for someone this week, I was inspired by a quote from Martin Luther King Jr:

 

'You just need to make the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase....' or words to that effect, I don't have it to hand. You could look it up.

 

There are so many ways in which this resonates - work dreams, life dreams, people dreams - and the sentiment echoes many memories of courage gathering, being strong and brave, placing one crucial first foot on the staircase and trusting that the ascent will be obvious ahead. The operative word here is 'dreams', and there are a million quotes and counter quotes about those.

 

I'm reflecting back over these Lightbox posts remembering first steps, partly because a lot has changed in the six years I have been writing them, and also at the moment it's helpful and - readers, may I be presumptuous here? - actually, quite interesting storytelling in places.

 

Back in 2006 when I began Lightbox, 'blogs' (hate using that word, it's so ugly) were not ubiquitous. They were still just a place to play, and record. So I started recording, and exploring life a bit more, perhaps as a way of collecting interesting things to record.

 

When Lightbox began, I didn't know I could write anything that anyone cared to read. The Major Project Of My Life hadn't happened, I hadn't run a half marathon or been to Portland, New Zealand or Peru, or in a hot air balloon, or climbed an E1 route, and I was a few heartbreaking bloke encounters lighter back then too. I wasn't qualified as a teacher and certainly hadn't managed to create the street kids exhibition let alone place it anywhere. When this site began, I hadn't yet had all my photography kit stolen, sung My Funny Valentine and You've Got The Love solo to an audience, or led hymn singing with a guitar on a beach in Sweden. I hadn't listened to a sermon in french and understood it, and - can you believe this - hadn't found a single sequinned heart on the floor. I hadn't had my faith stretched to breaking point and reconstructed when I chose to give up my need to control everything, and I certainly hadn't realised that Lightbox would become the place where I would share that prayerful stance in the 11,097 times you have all visited and read along with me. And on top of all this, I hadn't had that crisis approaching my 40th birthday this year, which revolved around feeling I had nothing to show for being 40 because I'm still not married and don't have kids - isn't that perverse?

 

Not being married or having your own kids can attract a lot of pity from people, and this is nothing less than robbery of everything else you are. Come on people, if you don't have those things then you had better make sure you are not caught sitting around waiting for it to happen. That would just be a shameful waste of a life.

 

I had no clue when I put my foot on the first step that my staircase would turn out like this.

 

Here's the thing, Mister King, and I suspect you're way ahead here, but as I've discovered, the staircase isn't really very straight at all is it, and it doesn't seem to have an end point on the landing either.

 

(Perhaps an Escher drawing would fit right in at this point.)

 

Looking back over these posts is like seeing chinagraph pencil on contact sheets - picking out frames that have a clunky, disjointed, imperfect, curiously compelling quality about them. It may not be a perfect narrative, but this is my staircase. I'm glad it exists.

 

 

* Thanks to Robbie for the birthday photograph.

 

 

{Today's Soundtrack: Ricky Lee Jones - Rainbow Sleeves}

 

Thank You Rowan

It was about ten years ago that I stood a couple of feet in front of Rowan Williams to make this picture. He was about to take his position as Archbishop. He talked back then about the growing 'cult of celebrity' which really resonated with me as a young photographer, and since has helped inform the way I shoot portraits. 

This week I was invited to photograph the unfolding events at Lambeth Palace as Justin Welby is announced as the new Archibishop. I was pipped to the post by someone who was (as I am led to understand) not concerned with upholding industry standard copyright terms (as I am) - for the sake of what? He would have no right to use his own images under those terms, even in his own portfolio. And I really hope he didn't accept an inappropriately low fee either. 

My years working at Magnum photos really taught me a respect for our photographic pioneers who fought hard to ensure the skill and rights of the photographer are protected, which is why we have the laws we do. Perhaps this person has different views, but what he did this week is why it is so difficult to make a living out of photography now. This, and a common misconseption that anyone can take a decent photograph if they have an expensive-enough camera is eroding photography as a profession. 

As I sit at my desk in Bristol this morning rather than run around in Lambeth with the new Archbishop, I am obviously evaluating what I do this for, and how. So here it is:

As a photographer, I believe each of us has precious dignity that a good photographer knows how to capture. This involves having insight, wisdom, respect, kindness - travelling the journey together and caring to look after each other for the long haul. Approaching people with my camera with integrity and respect carries all the way through to how I run my business. I do experience David and Goliath moments in negotiations quite often, but I choose to stand firm and honour both my business and the people I work with. 

I lost this job, but I keep my integrity, which is what I'll still be shooting with in decades to come even if the photography industry has gone to pot.

So, back to Rowan.

Thinking on themes of enduring and wise love of our fellow humans, this man has been a role model for me. I treasure Archbishop Rowan for the careful measure he brought to serious debate, and his ability to thoroughly mix compassion and intelligent reasoning in the tough job of steering fiercely strong heads towards workable positions that involve all of us. He has an immense grasp on the fact that life is never a quick fix, and as a leader—for me at least—models beautiful courage, insisting on a long 'road to Emmaus' journey while we ponder our spiritual lives, rather than the blinding 'road to Damascus' hit that would only satisfy a superficial, short-term desire for good headline solutions.

Every time I look at this picture today I feel really sad that a very great and wise man has resigned his position at the table, and I feel we—as a church, nation, or society—are losing a dignified voice worthy of brave, compassionate comment on social and global issues. Archbishop Rowan stood with integrity for social justice (he was once arrested for demonstrating against nuclear armament by singing Psalms, and remember his criticism of the Coalition "for which no one voted"?). I wish I had listened to him far more than I did.

But I know for certain that I'm glad he did speak the way he did, and I'm thankful to have this photograph. If it should be any Archbishop, I'm glad it is him.

Thank you Rowan.

{Today's Soundtrack: Yo-Yo Ma and crew - Here and Heaven}

A Place to Sit

Lent; lenticular - a changing picture depending on which way you view it.

I'd forgotten about lent until a friend asked me last night what I was giving up. I replied with a question: do you give something up, put it down for a while, or rather take something up which naturally displaces the less healthy thing?

Last year I took up quiet space, and was enriched at the end of 40 days because of it. I committed to getting up a little earlier and having a contemplative quiet time at the start of each day, and wrote down my insights from during those times. I learnt things, and discerned the way to navigate problems and dilemmas that were current. I was steadied and stilled, and my breathing regulated again. I was able to identify choices I was making out of fear, and gently gather myself to stop being fearful and make choices from a calmer, more rounded, love-filled perspective. The important things—often the things that don't shout for attention—had my attention again.

I can't figure out what to give up for lent. There is too much else to figure out in life, and too many possible viewpoints to choose. Taking up a place to sit will do for now.


{Today's Soundtrack: Cashier No.9 - Make You Feel Better}

Seasons, Clearly

Just look at it exactly as it is. What might you appreciate about this encounter if you can stop wanting the rain to be over? Shape, colour, form, texture that is quite expressive, life-filled, moving constantly. Suddenly, rain is not so miserable.

*

It's all about seasons. We have Hockney to thank for this reminder at the moment.

Sitting in a room at the RA with his large, tessellated film works of nature metamorphosing through the seasons, I gasped with a couple of hundred others as the same scenes were presented through jaw-dropping, theatrical changes: first, the autumn reds, fade to black; second, minimalist snow blanket, fade to black; third, spring green leaping off the screens, fade to black; and so on.

Moving through the galleries around repeat woodland scenes rendered in conflicting light through the seasons and times of day, I knew what he was saying. This time it leaps off and jumps on you, and that time it is totally flattened out and lifeless. Yes, I can feel both of those things in the same place.

Startling, large-scale canvas work pieced together on the biggest wall available and viewed from a distance moved me to tears - striking encouragement to keep going.

I have come to be enthralled by seasons and what they teach of patience through repeated cycles over years and years, and more years. Seasons take their time, and sometimes slow time. This is about the agony, serenity and exuberance of seasons passing, and how you can be moved and held in place all at once.

See it exactly the way it appears, and be held in place while it does the moving.

Seasons of yours. Ours.

Still moving. Still, but moving.

*
'hard times ain't gonna rule my mind'


{Today's Soundtrack: Gillian Welch - Hard Times}

Gifts : 2012

There will always be a horizon. A day set apart for making extravagant displays of love—St Valentine's—may appear to be a horizon in itself, but it's really only a vantage point from which to view the various glimmers and glistenings happening everywhere and everytime else and other. 

Looking out to horizons in the coming year, my slowly focusing lens keeps on with its fixation on scruffy glinting objects at my toes, distracting from the unwieldy temptation to skip today and grab tomorrow; or the temptation to forget about tomorrow and be restrained by what failed to happen yesterday. 

Forget about the horizon for a minute - what do we have in the frame today?

This year, I'm trying not to make goals so much as be glad of my gifts. If I treasure these little blessings everyday, then perhaps the goals will make—and realise—themselves.

"The heart bears indentations of yesterday's child"

Oh yes, the heart really does. These hearts really do. Hearts bear indentations, and they are all gifts. Dirty, messed up, grubby and flawed gifts, the lot of them.

A post-Valentine's post, because as I suggested this time last year here and there it's not all containable in one day, but rather all the small gestures in every other day of the year where love is really found.


*
I've been singing this song all night long.


{Today's Soundtrack: Lucy Rose - Scar}

Gratitude : 2011

The happiest of new years to you friends! Time to peer through a reflective lens on the year past, yes?

Well, I can't reflect adequately this year just gone without remembering where it began. That's always a good lesson isn't it; to fully appreciate where you are, remember where you came from. 2011 began from a relatively dark place, an exhausted position, but one of survival.

Summing up the adventures and new life that followed in 2011—and these were huge—I wonder what it was about the year that characterised it differently. I think it's partly about the opportunities that are lined up ready to happen, but it is also about you, your attitude and openness to learn, and how you choose to grow through pains and traumas which have the potential to sculpt you. Your fit with the shapes of other lives and events may depend on how you responded to those other happenings in the first place.

So my friends and I gathered at the cusp of 2011 and 2012, and we pondered our questions and gratitudes for the journey through 2011. For me, an unexpected outcome of doing this was realising a significant ignition of courage had come out of that determination to be thankful for all the crap that had happened previously. Somehow, claiming that position lead me to a new perspective on the age-old question, 'what's the worst that could happen?' You know you have struggled, and won, and and this inspires a bold grip on new opportunity and a strong fight in your heart to persevere and see right.

August 2011, there I am in South America at the end of a five-week trip when I had originally applied for a ten-day hike in the Rockies. I have delivered training programmes to local photographers, which makes real sense of my newly-achieved-through-hard-graft teaching qualification, and after travelling all around Peru I'm in the poorest district in Lima giving these school girls a go on my camera. These are Peru's future documentary makers, and it's a buzz to give them a glimpse of how it might work for them. Then just three months later I'm standing in a packed gallery in London talking to supporters about African street children and our photographs of them, and beginning to have the kind of conversations that happen because somewhere back there I managed to say 'yes' in the face of challenge, and maybe there was a glint I my eye because I'd survived something awful.

Battled, and won.

I am grateful for courage, which has produced a strength to really live life thoroughly through all its adventures. And yes, love comes with that, with bells on.

I hope and pray in this courage and new life for everyone I love, with gratitude.

A very happy new year. x

{Today's Soundtrack: James Vincent McMorrow - Early in the Morning}