a few thoughts on lith printing

It was nine years ago that I did my last lith print - on very well out of date (but perfectly OK) Kodalith, a beautiful and delicate for-purpose lith paper, long since 'deceased'. I'm not altogether certain of the rich tones offered by the paper that I used for the previous image below (Forte Polywarmtone 15), very different from the subtle colour shifts of kodalith. (This paper is also now deceased of course, though I have a stock of it). I have yet to try toning which might make a difference, as does the freshness of the developer: but that print was my favourite in terms of 'snatch point' and in terms of having no blemishes/dust spots whatsoever (I think it was one of two in that respect!).

It's good to venture into something new. And there's something seductive about the easy quiet, contemplative nature of lith printing (as long as you slow the process down) compared with regular printing; the balance of control and intuition. As well as a dreaminess, the hint of something just-below-the-surface...it seems to fit my current state of mind (kicked off perhaps in a timely way - and amongst other things - by Sarah Moon).

"flight"

 

Although we seem to have slipped imperceptibly now into winter, the colours and especially the light this autumn have been spectacular. I've been drawn to making more garden pictures. The autumn for me is a time when everything comes together. It is also a chance to take stock - a time for withdrawal; for turning inward.

lith print

All Images Copyright ⓒ Cate McRae 2008; All rights Reserved

Ways of Seeing

When my mother discovered that, at age nine, I could not make out that the blobs on the distant telegraph pole were in fact birds, she marched me off to the optician for my first pair of glasses. I was quietly devastated. I didn't take kindly to such indignity, or to such obvious evidence of imperfection. These days, though, it's cool. There are many, many, frames to choose from, no-one is teased any more - for slight short sight at least - and when my son reported a few weeks ago, at the same age, that he couldn't make out everything on the white board, he was delighted to have his eyes checked, and when he subsequently received his first pair of glasses, said it was better than a birthday present. Even if he does seem more interested in using them for alternative ways of looking at the world, than in the more conventional way...

All Images Copyright ⓒ Cate McRae 2008; All Rights Reserved

Sarah Moon at the RCA

Yesterday I managed to catch the last day of a fleeting retrospective of Sarah Moon's work at the Royal College of Art. I had read about it in the Independent earlier in the week (see the article, Frocks and Fantasy below) but at the time it hadn't registered with me just how short has been the run of this exhibition.

I've always been interested in Sarah Moon's work, and never had the chance to see it in such depth. Many of the works were new to me. It was presented in a non-conventionally non-linear way (though apparently carefully planned) which for me worked well, and compounded the eerie claustrophobic essence of her work, where each is separate from the other, whilst the whole effect is of a gently restrained but perhaps slightly insidious "crowding in" around and about you. Like strange dreams, half-remembered. It's possibly worth noting that my companion felt differently about the presentation, and was somewhat thrown by the seemingly disordered approach and particularly the lack of space between the black and white works : the fashion images were presented more conventionally.

Moon has made films of various fairy tales, along with a body of work of film stills from each, and her film The Red Thread (after 'Bluebeard') was included here with stills alongside (The Little Mermaid was also shown on film but unfortunately I was unable to catch this one). I looked at the stills first, which contained a descriptive narrative in french attached to the base the pieces themselves, with translation below. Half of these were in darkness because of the layout of the room, with the screen running the film in the middle. I thought this was a shame as it was almost impossible to read the text or see the photographs in the darkened half of the room. I overheard someone complaining about this later who was told that the point of that part of the exhibition was the film not the stills but I tend to believe that if you are going to show something, you should show it so that it is visible, or not bother at all. The pieces which represented the dead wives were perhaps the most striking of these stills, where each photograph became part of a larger, three-dimensional sculptural piece including some of the trappings of death (for example, strange, dark-blooming flowers). Due to their relative size and the fact that they were not along the furthest walls, they benefited from the spooky half-light within which they were placed.

The Red Thread alludes (I assume) to the line of blood that binds this particular story, and there was such a meandering thread or wire linking each of the pieces. The narrative is Moon's version of the Bluebeard tale, and for me it had an intense kind of almost unbearably uncomfortable claustrophobia that I've not experienced as a viewer since seeing the film Erasorhead. I am fascinated by the way narrative and poetry can be applied to photography, and for this reason found The Red Thread interesting and refreshing although ultimately it left me a little dissatisfied. I enjoyed it's tangible yet metaphorical qualities (such as the thread, the use of text, the sculpted flowers) but I found the husky heavily french-accented narrative, the very heavily-freckled heroine, the hammer-horror, just a little clichéd and even at times, bordering on a little silly. (And what is it, continually, with the obsession with freckles in the photography world). But whatever my response and possible reservations, there was a rarely-experienced pleasure in the process of being at the mercy of an unusual and powerful storyteller.

Susannah Frankel writes in the Independent article below “Moon's voice, above all, is an intensely personal one, whispering, rather than shouting.” She certainly does not shout, though I wouldn't describe her work as a whisper either, more an attempt at wordless communication direct to your sub-conscious mind. At it's best, it works powerfully in this way. Occasionally, for me at least, it falters slightly in its originality and becomes just a touch heavy. I wonder if a further pursuit of her own, more literally personal tales would have appealed to me rather than the re-telling of an old, even hackneyed one. But perhaps, given her use of the medium also, that would be a step too deep and too far. And I concede, of course, not her point here.

As for the fashion photography – I adored it. How unique it is to see the fashion world presented in this way, without the glitz and the gloss and not an anorexic model in sight. Truly fashion as a fine art – though Moon herself would be uncomfortable with viewing her own work as art, although is it the 'artiest' photography (a little too much so just occasionally) I have seen in a while.

Reservations aside (small ones really) Moon's retrospective was a breath of fresh air - or should that be the lingering echo of another world. Visual poetry it certainly is. We see far too little such introspective, poetic work amongst the glitzy, over-saturated colours, the deadly smoothness and hyper-reality of popular contemporary photography. It is a great shame this exhibition was not on for longer. However the less comprehensive concurrent exhibition at the Michael Hoppen Gallery runs until the 15th November, so if you missed the RCA exhibition, catch it if you can.


Michael Hoppen Gallery and book Sarah Moon- 1,2,3,4,5

Frocks and Fantasy - The Independent

Sarah Moon at the Kyoto Museum of Contemporary Art

towards the light

I had a chance yesterday to look at the series of pictures I made on the walk (see last posts). As often happens, when I first looked through them I skimmed over and rejected all but the one that most caught my eye. This is the one that was taken seconds before...

All Images ⓒ Cate McRae 2008; All Rights Reserved

Paradise or...

I'm feeling that I should have seen the connection between my photo Into the late summer light (see previous post) and W.Eugene Smith's Walk to Paradise Garden as pointed out by a number of people. Of course I was aware of Eugene's Smith's picture, although it's not something that I've held uppermost in my mind. If pushed, I would say that I have always found it a touch sentimental.

I think the photos (his and mine) are very different, and the reason that I hadn't made a connection - apart from only just having processed it - could be because of the 'mind-space' I am in as the photographer, rather than the viewer. The difference is maybe more apparent to me because of the process I went through taking it (just one of a roll of exposures as I tried to keep up with them) and because of the difference in motivation in taking the picture cf Eugene Smith who - and I've looked up a bit about it - needed a kind of revelation at that time or at least reason for carrying on...my motivation was very different. The results seem very different too, to me at least, even the play of light, although obviously there are two figures heading towards the light, from shady greenery. I do like the connection being there, though, after the event (if that makes sense).

I think it shows how valuable it can be to get feedback on your own work. It also raises interesting questions - where work comes from, how it relates to all that has come before. Whilst acknowledging the past (with gratitude) I'm not someone who believes that everything has been done already. I believe the opposite - there is everything yet to do.

into the late summer light

All Images ⓒ Cate McRae 2008; All Rights Reserved

a blustery walk

...and a steep climb on the Downs a few weeks ago with an old friend. Time passes too quickly and months and even years can go by and we don't see each other. We must do another walk whilst the weather holds (but who can rely on the weather - we'll do another walk anyway!..)

All Images Copyright ⓒ Cate McRae 2008; All Rights Reserved

not the costa brava

Down by the river - on one of the few days of 'summer' we had this year! Fortunately we were away from London for it (this is from the same August trip to East Anglia).
This is the second (or third, or fourth) entry into the murky waters, (by which time the pockets - no idea why they found themselves inside out - were full of water).

Despite the dreary summer we've had, the weather now is gorgeous - so hoping to get out and about and enjoy it during September, and hopefully longer!


nikon fm3a, Ilford delta 100

All Images Copyright ⓒ Cate McRae 2008; All Rights Reserved

forgotten cameras not forgotten!

from the online photographer today

For starters, I'm going to migrate the Forgotten Camera series over to Photoborg.org, although I'll post reminders here when new ones go up...

The good thing about this is that "Forgotten Camera" is now an ongoing series, with no deadline. So if you missed your chance before but still would like to participate, now you can.


There's not always a great deal that interests me on the online photographer, but it's good to see an ongoing film interest taken up.
Link to Photoborg.org

another corner of a field

A different corner, and boy - still from our trip in August, but with the RZ. Back in the city and well settled back to 'normal'; already it seems an age ago.

All Images Copyright ⓒ Cate McRae 2008 All Rights Reserved

forgotten cameras

and The Online Photographer

I had a look at theonlinephotographer.com - haven't checked it for a while (thanks to Suzanne for the link!) The results of the 'forgotten cameras' challenge is quite fun to see (deadline passed). As for 'forgotten cameras'...I do understand the passion. A fun thread to follow - and quite informative also.

for the record!

agfa billy record 4.5
c.1935 (art deco model)
6x9 folder

All Images ⓒ Cate McRae 2008; All Rights Reserved

some reasons why...

using this camera has been such a pleasure.

The obvious - it sets me free from the rules. Not being quite sure what you are seeing (composing) - but sure enough. Not being sure what you will get - but sure enough. The freedom to be instinctive. Having a go, with exposure, with focus. It doesn't come out 'right'? So what. If it goes wrong, blame the camera. Which means my stern editing self is sent packing. What a relief.

Light, light, compared with the RZ and so quiet - yet such gorgeous large negatives. I don't have to lift it to my eye, so it's quite discreet - except when the finder is obscured and I'm peering. I was quite surprised that in the town no-one seemed to notice it...a good thing for me, I prefer to be invisible. It struck me that some of the younger kids may not have known what it was...

The shape of the negatives. Imperfect. Have purposefully kept them all full-frame. And I love the look of the negatives from the pre-war lens.

Truly from another era. A sense of history - and, a direct lineage to this camera. I used it myself well over two decades ago; what was I then? What was photography to me, then? Have I changed, strayed, grown, wasted time?

And face to face with my past - the taking of the pictures, back then, and the subjects of the pictures. It feels good to bring the past alive again, in many ways, bring it towards the present. At the same time, using this camera makes it easier to look back, in a way that seems completely natural, completely 'right'..

The lineage again, going further back...knowing who owned the camera - one owner, before me (I think she must have been the first) a relation who rode a gearless bike over West Country hills before the War, riding thirty miles at a time, with this camera in her basket.

The bad things - no pictures of hers remain. They were most likely part of the lost box of her family photographs, gone missing in one of many moves.

Another bad thing - good and bad - I do not want to crop these negatives. I feel more strongly about this than any other photos I have taken or formats I have used. So no cropping to 6 x 7, and no 6 x 9 enlarger yet (time for some alternative processes, perhaps...).

between the tall grass and the wild blackberries

Agfa Billy Record 4.5
Ilford Delta 100

All Images ⓒ Cate McRae 2008; All Rights Reserved

at the edge of a field

Agfa Billy Record 4.5
Tri-X
Well...I am seriously in love with this camera. And wanting a 6 x 9 enlarger! And, yes, in serious doubt as to whether I do want it 'fixed'! Whether I want to think, as usual, about doing everything 'right'. I'll have to live with that one for a while - I'm in no rush...

All Images ⓒ Cate McRae 2008; All Rights Reserved

two of them

Agfa Billy Record 4.5
Tri-X

All Images ⓒ Cate McRae 2008; All Rights Reserved

Swingtime

a little fun with the fixed 3ft focus, (and narrow depth of field).
This swing is getting a little small now, for a near ten-year-old, for much serious swinging - he still spends a great deal of time there though...(as does his more ruminating brother...)


Agfa Billy
Ilford Delta 100

pooh sticks...

Agfa Billy Record 4.5
Tri-X

All Images Copyright ⓒ Cate McRae 2008; All Rights Reserved

a couple more

It was a family trip away to a 'family' place. Our eldest son was with us this time (he spends a lot of his time away now). I take pictures of him when I can!

Agfa Billy Record 4.5
Tri-X

All Images Copyright ⓒ All Rights Reserved

new billy pics

Camera- Agfa Billy Record 4.5, 6x9 folder, c.1935













I played around with different apertures, to see what I could get. The dreaminess of some of these first ones seems to fit.

Exposure was sometimes problematic as the slower shutter speeds do not work properly, although once or twice I used a best guess using 'T'. I stuck to speeds above 1/30 where I could. All hand-held, and a great pleasure having no mirror slap. As for composing, - there is often a degree of guesswork and randomness, (sometimes pretty total!); the external finder is tiny; it's inverted of course (L to R) which is nothing new, but as in the station photo following, the problem sometimes is seeing an image at all due to the size and more often, the direction of the light shining on it. The pop-up viewer is pure guesswork. ...Other times, it's easy to see.

I really like the random feel, and the way I had to go with the camera as it is (even though I plan to fix it) I feel it adds to the power of the photographs and stops me being so much in control. Or maybe in a different way. Maybe I need, at the moment, the freedom it allows me.

It's amazing the depth of field you can achieve with f32, (as in the next station shot) even with the focus firmly stuck at 3 ft. I am wondering though, seeing those earliest negs : whether when I first had the camera there was more movement on the focus ring before it finally froze (I only clearly remember not being able to use it). In other words, it became worse under my care. In any case I promise billie a complete overhaul as recompense! I realise now what a fine camera she is. But I do like her as she is...




...I could pretend that the lean was artfully intentional but I'd be fibbing.







This is the station of the previous posted pics revisited. I was thinking of that first photo when taking this one, I was quite disoriented by the changes, trying to find the same position as years ago was harder than I anticipated. Unbelievabaly, after very little change really in years, just in the last three months a new road has sprung up, a new car park, and baskets of flowers. The 'new' cafe has gone continental with tables and benches outside. I had to take the shot from the middle of the new road, which disconcerted me, hence the lean...also it was impossible to see anything in the tiny finder - when the light shines on it in a certain way all you can see is reflections. Excuses excuses. Maybe I'll go back and try again, I should have been further back, I appear to have been standing pretty much where the car was in the first - not sure how easy that will be. Maybe I'll try again.

Another reminder of the past - (ah well -the buildings lean one way and the car another in this one!)







The film I used for the new ones was a mix of Tri-X and Acros 100


More to come.

All Images Copyright ⓒ All Rights Reserved

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday !!

May there be many more to come.


nikon fm3a nikkor 85mm f1.4/ XP2Super (print)

All Images ⓒ All Rights Reserved

Golden Oldies

I found these negatives, and quite a number more, back in March (see previous post here). It's taken me until now to find the space to look at them. They were taken on an Agfa Billy Record 4.5, (Prontor 11 shutter) a 6 x 9 art-deco folder (which was made c.1935) with FP4. At some stage the focus became, still is, stuck on 3 ft. It didn't seem to matter at the time (which was more than 25 years ago!). Not sure if I had a little more movement here with these (some of the first) before it finally seized up completely - but it never worked properly. No light meter either. I haven't used the camera in years, though looking at these negatives I'm going to give it a go again soon. These were amongst my first ever photos that were not taken on the little agfa instamatic my dad gave me when I was eleven or so. I did print some at the time at an evening class (not a very good one) - my first ever go at black and white printing - but not these. Then - no black and white photography and precious little other kind, only holiday snaps and first-child snaps, for nearly 15 years...

The first two are of someone who didn't much like having his photo taken. The third is my father, (who come to think of it never liked having his photo either so I'm lucky to have these) sorting through his summer harvest of apples - I cropped this one a little - which I will have to do when it comes to printing as my enlarger only goes up to 6 x7. The fourth is him too - the next are...well... the seaside (local, Suffolk coast). The railway station with car (and café) looks a bygone age - makes me feel pretty old. Not sure how long that car had been sitting there though, judging by the weeds!. The last is, I think, telling me where I came from (and it hasn't changed).

Anyway, I'm delighted to have them back.

All Images ⓒ All Rights Reserved

Is this a Portrait?

This is an important picture to me at the moment, for that reason is on the index of my website (a better view at http://www.catemcrae.co.uk/). To me it is full of personal resonance, but has also a kind of classical look, which (if so) comes fortuitously as this was very literally a 'grab' shot. It's one of a growing number of 'accidentals' that I seem to be gathering along the way – when my purpose is focussed on something else – usually the landscape or smaller 'outside scapes' - and then turned to my youngest son.

I was taking pictures of landscape, and then looked to the right to see my son in this position. My heart leapt a bit, because the whole landscape (as well as seeing him within it), looked so lovely, in the early winter morning. I couldn't take a picture with the Mamiya without taking a giant leap 10 or 20 yard backwards, so I put down the camera, and picked up the FM3a at my feet, (the technical bit - using aperture-priority, manual 28mm nikkor lens & the film was Tri X) and got the picture before he moved – although aware of me - and there it is, a 'snap'.

The landscape I've known since I was young. So - is it a 'snap'? A self-portrait? Or a portrait? Or a landscape? Both? All? On my site I put it in the landscape section, but that was more a question of context than anything else. There's a lot of me in it, it could be seen it as a journey to my past and also my future there, with him. But that seems contrived, and seen in retrospect.

There's more in it of him – he had no direction from me but just at that moment his presence, his posture, the waves of grass, the landscape, my position with a camera and lens that could take it all in, all came together and I was lucky enough to be there. I like that he is looking straight at the camera. And he has known the land since he was born, he has his own claim on it. I love the way he always lies and rolls in it. That won't last for long.

In the end, although definitions can be useful, the impulse to define can become at best a blind alley - at worst an unnecessary obstacle- as for whether or where it fits, I really don't care.

All Images ⓒ All Rights Reserved

A great find - 'lost' negatives

In one old folder, yesterday, along with some letters I cherish but had meanwhile completely forgotten (if those two states of mind can exist concurrently, which in a fickle kind of way, I think they can), I found some very old negatives of mine, Ilford HP4 and Kodak Tri-X taken with the Agfa Billy Record 4.5 (Prontor 11). I have thought about them from time to time, not knowing where they were, with a hollow feeling that I may have lost them but ....here they are! Precious negs, some of them, from well over 20 years ago. I didn't print myself to any extent then, and can't wait to see what I can do with them - but more important they will now be safe in negative sleeves along with all the rest.

In a way this fits with my next project (other than picture-taking), now that the website's done, to get more of the family archive - much older than these of course - minimally digitally 'restored' where necessary, but scanned at least, and then printed archivally onto silver gelatin.

Hibernation

It seems as if I've been hibernating, as far as this blog is concerned. I've been busy though - building a new website when I can, doing some portraits. The website is taking far longer than I thought, designing and constructing it myself with the help of dreamweaver (building the pages, no templates) has been a steep learning curve, but I am now writing the code myself more often than not - oddly satisfying. Gradually it's becoming less of a mystery, revealing itself to be quite simple in the end. It's just finding the way through the undergrowth of the unknown initially. However it turns out, when it's finished it will be an achievement. The good thing is, having gone through this process, it will be very easy to maintain once it's done. I think it is ready now apart from editing, processing and uploading all the pictures. Although technically this is the easy bit, it is not in other ways; I find the editing very hard - easier somehow with a website with a total of under twenty images (as currently). Much harder really to delve into the work I've done over the last ten years and come up with something representative without being overdone. It can only ever be a selection - but the process of reviewing and making that selection is beginning to prove the most useful part of all - possibly even more useful than having the finished site.

I also had a chance, between Christmas and New Year, to do some more landscapes. I feel at last I have enough that tell something of the loneliness of the place, and with it the spirit of calm, and ....ancientness somehow, as if it's all on the very edge of something...between land and sea as it is, but somehow more than that, somewhere timeless. There's a lot of 'me' in the pictures too. I have processed all the film except for one (4 rolls so far, one of which is 35mm). Interesting the difference between the 35mm (with 28mm lens) and the 6x7 (with 110 lens). I like having the choice, and both to hand, but I'm also contemplating a wider lens for the Mamiya for landscape work, although I realise I would then miss having the immediate choice to hand that I have now (intensely disliking carrying spare lenses and fiddling in the field).

Onto film

Some weeks after the last August visit (and a couple of weeks ago now) we are back there again.

I liked the photo of Cal in the grasses, but wished I had it also on film to print myself in black and white.

I have only the RZ with me this time, and plenty of film.

I ask him if we can have another go, with him in the grasses....he gives me precisely two seconds.

Funnily enough, I think it comes out with a more natural feel than the first, even though in a sense it was more 'set up' (or re-created). This time the red hot pokers are over, and the white flowers are out, (dahlias? or maybe they are really yellow - I forget!) more suitable to black-and-white, which is pure fortune. I think I prefer it. Perhaps it was saved from seeming stilted because the whole thing was over in a blink of an eye, and I had to work very fast...





Dog-days of summer: Cal in the grasses






Another from the same afternoon. Neither 'set up' or re-created this time!





Dog-days of summer: Cal with horse chestnut

All Images ⓒ All Rights Reserved

Sketch book : postscript.

It has been positive sorting these digital pictures, there is an immediacy I cannot deny – taking the photographs, beginning to sort and edit some yesterday of the house and garden on the screen has set my mind spinning with ideas, reminded me how important the place is to me still, how much more there is to do.

I have many sleeves of negatives to look through, much to sort from the past, and many thoughts for the future.

Best of all, I still have several rolls of film to process from the last trip. As always when several weeks (or even, occasionally, months) have gone by & I’ve left the rolls waiting, and have half-forgotten what I’ve taken, I’m looking forward with eager anticipation to see what will be there…

The holidays are over, and my mind is spinning with projects – the strands that weave a continuing pattern of this place is only one of those projects – but I know it is one I will return to again and again.

The apple trees are old...

(continuing the "sketch book"...)









And there are hardly any apples on the Bramley any more. The eaters are Worcester Pearmains. Why is it that the best are out of reach?
Though...I could surely reach forward and take... that one...
















The silver birch is thought to be at least as old as the house itself, which dates back to the 'thirties. Looking up, it seems like the back of a woman, with neck bent forward and arms stretched to the sky.


















This is the boundary of the garden, I am outside, looking back.



















Not more than twenty paces, and I look back again. The house and garden are completely obscured.




All Images ⓒ All Rights Reserved

A splash of colour

Time for some pictures. These are from my trip described in my last post. And warning for traditional lovers (and of course I am one) these are not taken on film. I have all the photographs transferred safely to my computer of course, backed up on another hard drive - but no time yet to process them. I'm beginning to feel that keeping up with the workflow can be just as hard with digital...These are some sketches.










Cal in the grasses. He was hiding. All I spied was his face, his hair at this time of year bleached from red to gold, the exact colour of the summer grasses.












At last some time to myself, to wander around the garden while others are occupied on a sleepy afternoon, in the house. I lifted some low branches to the side of the small shed, and found the umbrella, hanging like some exotic flower, strange and surprising, but almost as if it had always been there...Was it left more recently, by a visitor, one of my brothers, a young nephew, or left there years ago, even by my father perhaps, and never noticed? Long enough for some creature to make it's nest inside it...

More to follow.....

All Images ⓒ All Rights Reserved

A few days away

We’ve just had a few days away at my mother’s house. Nearly a week. Refreshing, as always, visiting this place I have known for the largest part of my life. Not only getting away from the city, but so much more…hard to put into words.

Every time I go I pack my camera gear – sometimes more, sometimes less. Sometimes I take everything, because I never know what I’m going to feel like using. Sometimes I take no pictures at all.

I started documenting the house and garden in a more or less strategic way - or rather with no strategy beyond the fact that I knew for certain it was something I had to do - five years ago, soon after the death of my father. In that first year the pictures I took were raw and possibly rough in a black-and-white kind of way. I realise, this time, how the pictures are changing, becoming less about my father and his place there (and possibly my relationship to him) and more about the place itself. The pictures I think are softer, and I am taking many in colour as well as always black-and-white; the place, after all, is full of vibrant colour at this time of year - and above all, soft greens and grassy fawns in a natural, slightly overgrown kind of way. On the edge of being out of control - physically itself at the boundary of a controlled kind of wilderness - but just maintained, and in balance…less edgy than the first pictures when the future was uncertain, everything was let loose, and there was no equilibrium to be found, in a place that had always been predictable, and sure.

Black Dogs : connections between story-telling and photography

From Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs.
The story-teller, 'Jeremy', is questioning the way his mother-in-law views an event in her life, involving an encounter with two black dogs, which she claims changed her life:


Turning-points are the inventions of story-tellers and dramatists, a necessary mechanism when a life is reduced to, traduced by, a plot, when a morality must be distilled from a sequence of actions, when an audience must be sent home with something unforgettable to mark a character’s growth. Seeing the light, the moment of truth, the turning point, surely we borrow these from Hollywood or the Bible to make retroactive sense of an overcrowded memory?


Perhaps using memory, and thinking or writing about the past, we do force some kind of turning point in the way McEwan's character suggests – when the truth is events usually unfold more randomly, even erratically, and life can't be easily pinpointed in that way. And yet I think it can, though it’s often only in retrospect that we realise the significance and symbolic nature of a particular event, or moment.

The writer creates those ‘moments’ but maybe it is not as manipulative as the above passage might imply. Or, it is, but with good reason (and it isn't a negative thing). Any writer forces the reader along the path they wish the reader to follow, even if that involves giving ‘choices’ and denying conventional structures.

Almost immediately (more obviously so with digital) a photograph has capacity to become a part of a ‘looking back’ and takes context from what has preceded and what is to follow, in a way (normally) that totally out of proportion to the actual significance of that moment as it would have appeared with no camera there to record it.

So almost instanteneously it becomes ‘memory’ and a photograph becomes a ‘defining moment’ in the way the turning points of our lives become, often in retrospect, defining moments – they seem to distil the ‘truths’ of the time they were taken. Very like memory, and possibly as liable to distortion, and with a tremendous power (like the subjective recollection of events) actually to form and become memory itself….

Some pictures especially connected with members of my own family and particularly my children, now seem pivotal to me, in a personal sense in their lives and therefore mine too of course – and in the quietest sense possible – moments occurring with the quietest steps – (and the significance only realised after the event).

This passage, from Black Dogs again – for some reason made me think of some of the photographs I have taken of my mother, with my perspective being uncannily close to the narrator’s. Not the exact 'image' described, but the feeling and the relationship. And apart from that, or anything else, I just love the details of it – the image of the woman herself, her cardigan, her teaspoon and her bulbs, her quiet determination. Very visual, very simple. I guess this is the kind of writing I like best.


'Jeremy' is making tea for his mother-in-law, in her room, in the residential home she lives in….

Outside the rain had stopped but the wind still blew, and a tiny woman in a pale blue cardigan was making her way across the lawn with the aid of a walking frame. A strong gust could have carried her away. She arrived at a flower-bed against a wall and knelt down on the grass on her knees, she manoeuvred the frame to one side, and took from one pocket in her cardigan a tea spoon, and from the other a handful of bulbs. She set about digging holes and pressing the bulbs into them. A few years ago I would have seen no point at all in planting at her age, I would have watched the scene and read it as an illustration of futility. Now, I could only watch.

Springing from the Ground

I came across this the other day, in a book belonging to a friend:

A few years ago, at Mount Grace Priory in Yorkshire, several tons of earth were moved during restoration work. Old soil which had not been exposed to the air for centuries was uncovered and the seeds of mediaeval plants, hidden in it 400 years ago, began to grow. Wale, a yellow dye herb, sprang up. We read about this and visited the Priory. I expected to see some rather sad and tired-looking plants, which had germinated half-heartedly and crawled out of the earth. Instead, we found masses of tall, vibrant flower-spikes, blooming, glowing golden, bursting with life – perfectly ready to take their part again in the cycle of creation. The power of the seed was not
diminished in any way by being hidden for so long in the dark ground.
[From Ground and Spring: Foundations of Quaker discipline, by Beth Sharp, pub. Quaker Books 2007]

The writer goes on to comment on the poppies that bloomed in Flanders Field in the First World War, for the same reason. The trenches and shellfire both dug up the fallow ground and as the earth was exposed to light, the poppy seeds dormant there enjoyed just the right conditions for their growth and the battlefields became an unexpected garden.

I’m not a Quaker, I don’t follow any religion. But this spiritual message seems to cover the essence of death or destruction, or decay, and renewal. Something many artists, including photographers, seem to be preoccupied with. I know I am, and if not that, a sense of change, of moments that mark a movement from one mood to another, the point at which the pendulum reaches the highest point, and then turns down again.. The story of the mediaeval flowers struck a chord with the new personal project I am working on. Which is to do with the relationship of transience and permanence, I suppose. On a wider level, of course, the idea of the transience of existence is inseparable from the act of photography - if the intention is to capture and distil a moment in time – the ephemeral nature of all things given an illusion of permanence with the image obtained. Then, the print itself, becoming of-itself and something other than that lost moment, achieving a very real kind of presence and ‘permanence’.


That photographs should last is important to me - as a kind of defiance of the passage of time – as well as at times a preoccupation with death, or decay and renewal. I don’t try to analyse it too much, to think why. But there it is. And reading the above passage makes me want to get on with recording those pictures I know are floating in my head and need to be on film, on paper.

The eternal dilemma

I’ve done it again – spent the last six days clear in the darkroom – on several days for over five hours a day.

I’m feeling crabby, tired, dispirited. Yesterday I was on the verge of deciding I was mad to keep this darkroom going and packing it all up. I feel like a mole coming out into the light, unsure & unwilling about scuttling back in, yet disoriented and disheartened by the daylight world.

Yesterday I had a bad day, too much guesswork (because basically tired and fed-up), taking short cuts, getting my inevitable come-uppance.


So, the dilemma: I am continually ahead of myself, and yet never catching up. It is important to print my best pictures, the best I can, and I need time to do this, and yet it is also important to be producing new work. When I am printing I feel I am not really progressing (which of course, is not true). When I’m taking new pictures I’m always aware of the backlog of negatives to be dealt with. I do the printing in ‘phases’ – try to get as much done as I can – and now I am aware of the approaching school holidays which will eat up my printing time. Then I will keep up with a certain amount of picture-taking but always, always behind myself.

I know the lesson: always limit the time in the darkroom to three days a week at most, around four hours a day at most. Breaks within that time. Slow and easy – the methodical way that is, as it happens, quite natural to me.

Not to run ahead of myself, expect too much of myself, be so unforgiving of errors I bring upon myself, my harshest critic.

Breathe in, breathe out, take a break. No hurry. There’s time enough for everything..…And yet time passes like a whirlwind!

Wind-on levers continued...

I was talking today with a friend (not over-seriously) about wind-on levers – how the act of winding on the film gives you a moment, a space, almost like a pause or ‘gathering together’ in a martial art; a silent, physical centring

But….she said …….what she loves about her camera is the speed of it, how she doesn’t miss the shots…

There’s a truth in this. But I also firmly believe that for every shot that is missed there’s another waiting.

Sand between the toes, or the mantra of preparedness

Sand between the toes. The simple touch and feel of it; connections. Opening the camera back, laying out the roll, or cannister of film, easing it into place, carefully fixing over the sprockets, or winding around the backplate, until secure in place. Turn, close, click, wind, click....ready. The beauty of touch: Now I am ready.



As for the digital - It took me a morning to work out it's functions - I surprised myself at how quickly I took to it. I loved the immediacy of it, the power to see what was there on the screen, to delete, to try again. I grabbed all I could. I even dreamt about it that night. The next day, though, I was surprised that the number of photos I had taken had not exceeded what I would have taken on film. My grim 'internal editor' perhaps, overseeing the extravagance. Quite a lot of fuss really, over - when I calmed down and looked at it - not very much. And then, a feeling of emptiness, an odd feeling of nausea as if after eating too many cream cakes - a sense of having moved away in strange way, from myself.



More than that - in my enthusiasm I was in competition not only with the rational cooler self, my 'internal editor' but with another intelligence. Pitting my wits first against the camera - to master it - and then cajoling it into a kind of partnership, but still finding myself trapped into deferring to it, with it's superior knowledge.



And this without even mentioning the follow-up, the next step - the elements of air and water, the involvement of eye and limb, the broader movement, (dancing in the dark is permitted, not only metaphorically), the journey from light to dark, dark to light...compared with the clinical cheery brightness of the computer screen, with pinched eyes, fingers, neck....A toss-up, a preference...But I know where my own preference lies. Though I wouldn't do either every day, and two hours in the dark should be matched by half an hour's exercise. A rule I never actually break because I never impose it, as I clearly should.



A few days after buying my digital camera I felt like leaving it high and dry, turn my back on it. Only room for one decision-maker here, even if those decisions may be out by a fraction of a step. Never anything that could not be dealt with.