Honest Documents

Just to have a look, I tried yesterday's pictures in black and white. I was overcome by the irresistable urge to make squares. There are some issues at stake here, and I would stutter in conversation with respected documentarist colleagues and friends as I try to justify what I've done. (Let's be clear, we are talking documentary, purely and strictly.)

First, ditching the colour proves that my original intention has been lost. I have created something else in black and white which is other than my original intention. This is not wrong, but different, and the purity of my original vision has been challenged. This exercise goes to show how strong an influence the choice of colour and format is on the way I shoot.

There is always a reason why we press the shutter, and for me it's usually about intuitively feeling a series of elements collaborating in a split second, working a chosen medium to connect these things like wiring a circuit board - electrifying them.

Second, I may have come across something interesting and made some strong compositional shapes by cropping this way, but I have adulterated the intuitive moment I chose to capture that relationship between me, the people in frame, the surroundings, all of it.

It's great to experiment this way, and I like these little squares very much, but they don't describe how I felt at the time, and they present another view now which isn't actually honest - raking over the coals a little. The Seville trip was loaded with all sorts of subtle feelings which I chose to skirt around in panoramic colour. To be armed with medium format black and white would definitely have produced different results, probably much closer up, but at the time I didn't want that expression - it wasn't my intuitive response.

Something pure has been lost. These square frames are entertaining, but they are not alive with the original heart.

Last week an amateur photographer friend, in a moment of absolute bloody-mindedness, claimed the skill of framing in camera and applying a strictly 'no crop' policy was a redundant skill and 'b*******'. Oof... I felt that, but didn't defend myself very well at all, mumbling on about Henri and his decisive moment. I crop, sometimes. But I know it's when I haven't succeeded in the first place. It's always a second best measure when I've failed to summon that initial collaboration in the moment.

This is a feather in the bow of those documentary photographers who argue against cropping, and work hard at shooting precisely the way they experience a place and people right in that moment. Cropping and changing an original always, always, earths the electric charge of your document. I'm sorry bloody-minded friend, but this time it really is all about the moment.


{Today's soundtrack: Freelance Hellraiser}

Colour in Sevilla

Seville is an interesting city. It's a place rich in colour, so I shot colour, although found myself aching for black and white which is how I normally choose to explore portraits. Curious, that it felt this way.

There's a very obvious aesthetic in places like this, by which you allow yourself to be seduced with large blocks of colour and just let your mouth water while the sun shines. Is this really so wrong? I know plenty of photographers who would say so, the sort who are quite good at explaining the difference between beauty and glamour. What instead do I look for?

Amidst a confusion about what I am looking at, or being seduced by, and however bright-looking a city is, it is still only a city because of its people. Surprisingly, Seville stopped shouting at me when I paid attention to the people I was with. And as I started to notice them more, I saw their relationship to the space around them and–quietly–to each other. It's an interesting relationship, and makes me wonder about how much a person reflects a city. Or is it the other way around?

•••

[extract from diary, april 21]

What am I remembering?

Many walls painted yellow, or orange, or rust-red, all standing out next to white plaster and wrought iron. Purple scarf, blue shoes; red napkin boxes, blue writing on white sachets of sugar, and light gleaming off hot, metal surfaces; oranges in the trees and on the ground; lavender and lichen that make the storm clouds appear almost silver - pewter at the very least;...


I wonder how I might represent any of its colour using black and white - so this becomes about the people and their relationships and the details of how things are arranged together.

•••

How would all this look in black and white?




{Today's soundtrack: Band of Horses - Cease To Begin}

Climb what's in front of you

Hello there.

So, I've just come back from a month visiting my sister in the States. Fancy that! Lucky me, huh? Time away, long rides on planes and a prolonged journey into the spacious place of spring–you can't blame me for delving into some thoughts on new beginnings now, can you? Let's see, where to begin?


Looking at these fuzzy window-seat views from the plane-ride home I consider why a wide, open space can feel so intimidating. It's because it's so big, and I'm so small, and if I walk out into that with all its mystery and wonder, and all it's lack of anything to cling on to, I feel in real danger of getting lost. Obviously.

There are people and things that have really caught me up this last year, some good, amazing in fact, and some not so good, very much like thorny brambles. (The people issues are especially bramble-like as the more you wriggle the worse it gets, and it's not all your fault though beware of the tendency to blame them entirely. "You're complicit in it too," says Father Richard.)

Because of both feeling exhausted and the need to breathe, I've prayed for a clearing in the woods, and now there is one, a big one. There is nothing on offer but this spacious place, and it's time to be brave and step into it. I must confess my reluctance to do so, quite enjoying the solidity of having big projects and problems to rub up against, but that's not any way forward into a new dawn is it? Today is the day for letting the end of a few things be, releasing them and graciously accepting the open place up ahead.

Why 'climb what's in front of you'? Greg's climbing advice. Just bring the focus in to what's here and now, the moves that you must make this minute, and don't be thrown by an occasional view of the massive landscape, which you will never comprehend. Spread your arms wide and shut your eyes, stretch out all the way through to your fingertips and just let go. Breathe in and imagine there is absolutely nothing familiar to hold on to in any direction. Be here, right now. Breathe out. This is all there is. Climb what's in front of you.

*

And because I've been away for so long I couldn't leave it there...

In Portland, Oregon, you'll be walking along minding your own, and then suddenly spy a little horse roped up to one of the old horse rings around the city. Neat reminders about things feeling a little out of scale depending on your perspective!




{Today's soundtrack: local radio - that glad to be home}

Spring

A wise person once made the observation that those who sow in tears will reap in joy.

It's been an interesting few months through the winter, following another wild year of change and adventure. Winter is the time when things are frozen with nothing going in and nothing coming out - nothing but hibernation and things taking place in secret. But now with a stirring feeling it's time to return to the soil and make my public appeal for Spring to do its work!

Looking out across an open - seemingly empty - space I can't help wondering what will emerge, and don't know where to start with sharing my thoughts on winter. Today let's breathe into the hope that the seeds are moving underground. Today's message is simple and there's not much to look at, but that's all I can give you. Honesty.

What will happen next? I just don't know, I really, really don't know...


{Today's soundtrack: Thomas Newman - Any Other Name}

Abandon

A soundtrack today caused something to stir in my tummy. It was this thought about someone giving themselves in abandon to be alone with another person, whatever the cost. The soundtrack is Sufjan Stevens, 'To Be Alone With You' from Seven Swans. The track is a beautiful love song written between humans, but then takes a humbling twist turned between humans and god, describing in terms we understand quite how far god would go to say, "I just really, really love you." It's so hard to resist this kind of abandon when it's brought to you, but quite a challenge to let yourself go to it at the same time. You have to trust that all your fear and doubt and need to control an outcome will be triumphantly overshadowed by something else that won't be articulated in any language we understand. No, it's another language altogether, spoken in quiet, physical, eye to eye presence. You do know what I'm talking about. It is completely at home in contradiction and repelled by possession. Someone else abandons themself for you so that you can live free.

I could write about this for hours, but am not an expert, far from it.

True love is a force beyond reckoning. To grow strength enough to hold love you must abandon, not posses, and to hold this in your hands is (to quote Father Richard Rohr) 'the most heroic thing you'll ever do'.

Be still my beating heart.





{Today's soundtrack: Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise/Seven Swans}

Softening

Hmmm... sorry that things are a bit slow guys.

I'm feeling a bit soft at the moment so am retreating a little to chew a few things over. Also, I have heaps of work to do, and so lightbox thoughts aren't really getting the space they crave.

I had to rewrite this post because I felt last draft I was being way too honest! I think being soft and tender is a very special thing, but also realise how untrue that is for so many people, with softness seen as a sign of weakness by so many. The reverse is true. It takes great courage to meet tenderness and stay with it a while.

Anyway, today's picture is from the recent 'special job' shoot. It's my friend Pete pretending to be an angel, because for a little undefined while I'd like someone else to help with the thinking and praying. Thanks Pete.


{Today's soundtrack: Stevie Wonder - As}

Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Sorry, I know we're supposed to be back on Homeland but I really need to say this.

David Cameron is just wrong to incentivise commitment to the family unit by financial carrot dangling. Suggesting the way to strong relationship is through pound signs in the eyes is so, so misleading. Building family like that–both locally and nationally–will only breed a culture of bloodhounds, and the social problems we currently face will only become more severe because young people will grow up believing avarice is the only way forward. Advocating family because of the money it earns you is a rotten seed to cultivate.

And no, Mr. Cameron, Britain will not win, as you claim. It will lose, very slowly and irreversibly, as the effects of these ideas stream down from generation to generation.

I know the 'family' buzzword is not new in party conference world, and I know they're all as bad as each other. But it makes me sad that yet again, here are supposedly fresh ideas promising change, but actually there is absolutely nothing radical about them, and were we to say 'yes' to this we would just rub more salt in our existing cultural wounds.

I know it's boring being skint, and that having cash really helps, but money does not make the world go round. Only love can do that, ultimately.


{Today's soundtrack: Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise}

Previously, on Homeland...

"It'll turn up," they say, and it did, the precious CD of Homeland pics. So we can resume the musings on a place called Home, but before that, here is a reminder of where we've been so far:

Introduction

Episode i

Episode ii


{Today's soundtrack: PJ Harvey - A Place Called Home}

The Race

"It's not how you start, it's how you finish..."

But then "every end has a start."


I'm on a train to london with the pod. It's nice to be out.



{Today's soundtrack: The Hours - Narcissus Road}

Thankfulness

Sigh. Today I'm feeling a bit miserable because the foot injury is flaring up again. Most of all I want to run around and be thankful for this lovely job, the one to go in that space we're watching, and most of all I want to be happy about a calm and treasured time of things all having worked out OK. But most of all I'm cross at having to stay still with my injury and separate from the world! It's so tricky - we're not built for isolation, and I'm not great at sitting still. I'm trying not to be grumpy but it's quite difficult!

For now, in order to make a point of thankfulness, I'm reaching for these photographs from shoot day. They help recall a grand and blessed session with special folk, and make a point of the fact I get to do some lovely things in my work, to which my stillness today tips a little nod.


{Today's soundtrack: fireworks somewhere in town, and an owl in the tree outside. Yes, an owl! And I thought it was some teenagers larking about...}

Trees of Justice

A man once said, "And the trees of the fields shall clap their hands." What on earth does that mean? Trees don't have hands.

But then, maybe if you think of branches as arms, and the leaves as hands, and if you've ever stood beneath a sycamore branch while the wind blows its leaves, it does somehow seem like hands clapping. And then if you step back into that wind to look at the whole tree it becomes like an excited crowd of people. And if you step back further to get a view of the whole field of trees it could–in a certain visionary way–mimic a huge stadium audience, cheering something quite brilliant and arresting. So, maybe as you're standing there feeling tiny, there is an impression growing that the trees of the fields do indeed have hands to clap and they sense something to cheer that we just guess at for now. Let yourself be enchanted by this.

I can't tell you how much I love trees - these fantastic, giant poems to strength, resilience and longevity. The roots of a tree grow as deep as the branches are high, an important reminder that as deep as a person's suffering is, so is their capacity to love.

Trees of justice, oaks of righteousness - excellent encouragers.


{Today's soundtrack: wind in the leaves}

Trophies

If you didn't see this picture with your own eyes, you would never believe that in a kitchen somewhere in the UK there was a saucepan full to the brim with malteasers, going partway to create adequate reward for a week of hard earned triumph.

Half marathons complete, crutches thrown away (believe it sister!) and the job of my life handed in (deadline TODAY). Completion of these things, my friends, has to be acknowledged.

No, this image will ever win awards, but just looking at the contents of that saucepan is enough to get the endorphines coursing while the radio provides music to smile to. And surely that's (in part) the job of photography - to record unbelievable things as they happen. (All of this is true, but I promise you'll never see the pictures of me running...)

Halleluliah, amen.


{Today's soundtrack: Supergrass - Sun Hits the Sky}