Life lately
and remembering how to see in black and white
It’s been a while.
That nagging sensation for months of “I should really write something” followed by a “But what about”. And the classic doubt of “Why AM I writing (or intending to write) with the purpose of putting it out in the world”? What is the point? Is it all just self-indulgent twaddle?
In the past I felt like the urge to write also came with a point, something to announce, like a new exhibition or the release of my book. But now I feel like I would like to write not because I have something to promote, I’d like to write just to write. Yet saying ‘I would like to write’ isn’t quite accurate. Unlike taking photos or talking about photography, writing isn’t something where the urge to do it comes easily to me. In fact, the image of me as a kid dragging her heels being forced to do something that an adult has told her to do comes to mind, though in this case I’m now apparently an adult and no one is forcing me to write. But it’s one of those things that once I get started the words generally start to flow and I almost always feel better and like I’ve accomplished something when I’m done.
So let’s get started.
I’m aware that it’s May and if in the past I thought February was too late to be writing about the events of Christmas, then May is just plain ridiculous. But I like ridiculous.
Christmas was spent once again in my home country of Canada. I split my trip up this time, first spending a week in the city I grew up in, Toronto, with my brother and his family. I had two visits to my favourite gallery in the whole world, The Art Gallery of Ontario (known to many as the AGO). Despite looking dramatically different to the AGO I grew up knowing due to a massive expansion in 2008, it still has the same effect on me that it had as a teenager, an unusual mix of a calming contentment mixed with that feeling of inspiration, a weight of history, importance, that feels a bit like a punch to the stomach. I’m not quite sure how to describe how these two very different emotions sit in my body, but I do know that it means that time spent there has its limits. I can usually spend an hour or two in the gallery, overwhelmed but delighted, then I need to escape, to walk and to process.
Something feels like it filters through. There’s something about being back in Toronto, which I left at the age of 20, that takes me right back to my teenage years, though mostly without the teen angst. I was 16 when I first studied photography at my Alternative High School and came to own my first 35mm SLR. Until that point I’d been shooting on a temperamental point and shoot camera and shooting only colour film. Discovering black and white film and spending hours in the school darkroom developing and printing turned an interest in photography into a full-blown obsession.
But after years of studying photography, both in high school and college, it has at times been difficult to get myself to take photos, or want to take photos, that aren’t part of a project. To feel playful and to want to feel playful.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but when I decided to take a roll of Ilford B&W 35mm film with me to Toronto I was somehow returning to my beginnings in photography and walking around Toronto tapped into a familiar feeling, a familiar way of looking from so long ago that has actually not felt that familiar in recent years.
Then, back home in England in January, I made a (spontaneous for me) decision to take a trip to London for the day and visit the Lee Miller exhibition at The Tate Britain. It was (mostly) wonderful. All those black and white photographs, the scope of the work she made in her lifetime. But oh my goodness it was crowded, and viewing an exhibition where the work feels so precious and intimate whilst surrounded by bodies, where you are moving an inch at a time, isn’t ideal. Once again, overwhelmed and delighted, I escaped, not having had as much time or physical space to view the work as I would have liked. I treated myself to the exhibition book knowing I could at least view that without hearing someone breathing into my right ear and take my time to pore over the photos without feeling like I was on a conveyor belt moving an inch at a time.
All of this makes me think about the relationships we have with a place and how we respond so differently to different surroundings. I feel like writing comes to me more easily when I’m at the cabin in Wales and when I’m there I take ‘proper’ photos of the community. My trip to Toronto had me taking 35mm photos using black and white film, as I did as a teenager growing up there, and I ended up taking photos that felt very reminiscent of the ones I took all those years ago.
When I’ve been asked in the past why I don’t take project-type photos outside of the community in Wales I’ve looked at the person asking this as if they’ve suddenly grown an extra head. Why on earth would I want to do that? Surely it’s obvious by now that THIS is the place with the people that inspire me. Silly person with two heads.
One of the surprising things to come out of visiting the Lee Miller exhibition was a new idea for a project/ body of work, one that would allow me to be motivated to take photos outside of my community in Wales and – gasp! - have me taking photos closer to my home in Malvern. I’ve often envied the type of photographer that takes their camera everywhere they go, capturing moments as they pass by, seeming to get their inspiration from anywhere they are. I’m more of the “get to know a place and people first” kind of photographer and then I patiently just keep going, aiming to dig a bit deeper, get a bit braver, photographing the same place and people for 15 years.
A few days after visiting the exhibition I had a meet-up with some of my artist friends in Malvern. I gushed about the exhibition and my experience of feeling inspired by it and how I had a new idea for a portrait project. And one of these friends turned to me and said, “Yes, I’ve always wondered why you don’t take photos like you do in Wales in Malvern” and I noticed that she hadn’t grown an extra head and agreed that it seemed to be the right time.
So I’ll pop a little ‘To be continued’ here and will write again in the upcoming months about this new body of work. And I also think that it might just be time to have a home darkroom again...
So glad to find you here via your IG post yea!
Looking forward to seeing your photos of Malvern! ❤️