Well it's a little fraudulent to celebrate a tenth birthday - we had a three year hiatus along the way - but I'm proud to still be writing this blog and staying true to my original intention to use it to think about how and why.
My Ambiguous Project posts drew the most visitors. I've even managed to generate the odd comment along the way too. But I'm also conscious this has become very much an interior conversation and you, dear reader, must be complimented on indulging me.
Committing to writing regularly has been really rewarding, for me at least. It's helped me think about my work. Before then I thought that would obstruct my natural, intuitive style. But hey even Barcelona need a plan.
I've enjoyed joining the dots or hyperlinking, to use a technical term, my thoughts across the years. James Burke's Connections was perhaps my favourite TV show growing up (well along with The Goodies) and he's embraced the web in the same way. Spanning time and space. Not a bad way to describe my work if I think about it.
Coincidentally it's my own birthday around this time and I was delighted to be given a book by my family of the work of a London photographer I was shamefully ignorant of.
Bakerloo by Harry F Conway is a vital record of Londoners in their moments of passing through one of the West End's arterial tube lines. The images achieve a remarkable balance of both confrontation and compassion. I really admire this work not least because it's diametrically opposed to mine in many ways. He engages with the people in his pictures, forming momentary relationships that are complex and disarming. He's a visible presence going about his business in an constricted space in an open and transparent manner.
He puts it so well
...fleeting moments of pure humanity were shared, deep underground with complete strangers.
Where people see an monotonous system to merely transport them, I saw life in all its ridiculous beauty.
Amen.
I've just
read a great
conversation between two people I've enjoyed following over the
years, Blake Andrews and Brian Formahls.
I was so
happy when Blake contributed to the Ambiguous
project. His blogging was a source of inspiration and Brian's LPV has
been a great resource to find about new street work. It was fascinating to find
out more about his recent thinking on urban walking and I must share them
For me,
when I’m on a long walk time tends to slow down and feels more abundant. Four
hours can feel like a week. It's that hyper focused attention mixed with the
ability to allow your mind to drift, that allows you to enter into a different
perceptual space. When you
add photography with meditative walking, then I truly feel that you can enter
new dimensions beyond our normal perception. Or I should say photographic
seeing because I don't think you need to actually make the photographs but
there's a lot of reverb when you see the actual photos.
I love
that last sentence.
The first
part corresponds to an approach I describe as a five act production of making
photographs...
- The
initial sense of a possible picture.
-
Choosing the moment to release the shutter. These two happen in quick
succession for me.
- The
revelation of the resulting images on the contact sheet. Some weeks/ months later,
we're talking analogue here folks.
- The
selection and making of a print. Eventually. After the Interval.
-
Re-looking, editing and sequencing those prints into a book or, even, a zine.
Each act
is just that. A set of separate actions that have their own worth not just part
of a process but greater than their sum. I could go on about actors,
narratives and drama but I think you're already there :)
Secondly
the word reverb captures
both a visceral response, not purely intellectual, and also a kind of echo rippling
out from the original act. It's also a musical reference I enjoy. I've compared
street photography to jazz in terms of technical words like standards and
improvisation as well as the spiritual and soulful. As an aside I was
fascinated to hear Mark Sealy
talk recently about how he now looks to John Coltrane as he
once did photographs for that quality of experience.
So what
about the act of walking itself. Can the definitive act of the flaneur/euse
incubate those conditions of meditation, of the satori moment?
I certainly recognise the state of attentiveness, of being immersed in my
surroundings to a point of invisibility. I remember reading Cartier-Bresson's
thoughts on Zen archery and recognising the
reference. Interestingly enough it surfaces obliquely in the conversation too.
Here's Blake
It’s strange to comment on Soth because
he actually made a direct comment on this thing years ago, that photography was
NOT a Zen Buddhist activity. Photography involves wanting, and acquisition, and
collecting, and all the little things you're supposed to let go of.
It's a
salient point and I'd only counter (between you and me) that the
wanting/acquisition/collection desire can be satisfied by simply connecting
with the world around us - in this case the streets - by focusing the mind on
people on proximity, how we move, interact, dream. On rare occasions it can
be an overwhelming experience. Even at an every day level there can still be a
common bond of emotion...simply if it's crossing Oxford Circus before the timer
runs out and the 159 bus bears down on us.
OK reverie over. There's work to be done.