Freida - St Bartholomews Church

Every now and then I like to pop into a church. I was brought up Catholic, which ought to be enough to cure anyone of their religious beliefs for life, but such indoctrination lives long and is rooted deeply in the psyche. So every now and then I like to pop in and say hello to the old fella, just to keep my hand in.

St Bartholomews in Brighton is a spectacularly impressive space; the vaulted ceilings almost induce a sense of agoraphobia. While Anglican in denomination, it’s also very ‘high church’ (literally and metaphorically in this instance) so the smell of incense was thick in the air.

As it was mid-day on Sunday mass had only recently finished and the congregation were still milling around the vast space, making polite conversation, drinking tea and enjoying biscuits. When you see such easy and comfortable conversations you begin to understand why people still go to church.

I spied Frieda sitting alone and to one side, drinking her tea. I made conversation with her and learned that she had come to Brighton as a nurse specialising in paediatrics and midwifery in 1970. She had had something of a fierce reputation during her time and I warmed to her as a result. She could be my mother, who was also a nurse and still is a force of nature, though she is merely a youngster at 73 compared to Frieda’s 91 years.

The light in the church wasn’t great; in fact Frieda was sitting below a rather yellow incandescent light, but she looked so wonderful I couldn’t help but ask to photograph her.

He Is My Neighbour

Sometimes you find perfect subjects where you least expect them. I don't know why I didn't think to ask someone so close to home earlier, perhaps sub consciously I doubted that my neighbour, who is a very private person, would agree. But he did.

It's very encouraging to engage with someone so relaxed about their own body. There’s a confidence about Ian that I suspect is the result of a strong intellect. I’ve known him, which is to say I’ve lived next door to him, for over 11 years. We’ve always been very friendly and civil and yet I don’t really know him as well as he deserves.

Body Positive - (warning contains potentially upsetting images of the artist without a shirt on)

As a child in primary school I experienced the most horrendous emotional trauma; it was prolonged, unrelenting and perpetrated by both my fellow pupils and, because I ended up being violent, the teachers, who came to regard me as something of a problem child. I’ve spent much time analysing the experience, receiving therapy for it and trying to trace the origins of how this unholy mess of a childhood could ever have been allowed to happen. I’m done with all that even though it’s still a part of me and always will be.

Of most relevance here is that a significant amount of the abuse was centred around my weight. I was a robust child and while not ‘obese’ especially by today’s standards, certainly overweight. Consequently, whilst my problems did not start with weight, it very quickly went there as this was the easiest way to get the highly entertaining (for everyone else’s gratification) emotional response I was so willing to offer.

When I got to university I sought redress by making myself physically very strong. I first got quite good at rock climbing, a sport which prizes lightness and power over all other virtues, and then subsequently started training in karate. By the time I achieved third degree black belt I was at the point in life where I also needed to train my brain. The anxiety I felt with the otherwise exciting decision to quit my job (and karate) and go back to uni to study full time, was borne out of knowing that stopping training would almost certainly result in me gaining weight very easily (and as it turns out very quickly).

My weight in adult life has subsequently see-sawed between about 82 kilos at my most svelte (four years ago when I applied myself to cycling with quite some vigour and success), and 100 kilos+ at almost any other time. I’ve never got over my self-consciousness about my weight and my body image is so far from being positive as to be borderline neurotic.

Body image is something we typically regard as mostly affecting women. It’s not so much that there is an active denial that men also experience it, but where you see many references in the media of this being a problem for women (and they are always universally, and rightly, sympathetic in this regard), you don’t see the same referencing for men. It certainly feels like society doesn’t see this as a problem for men and yet with routine regularity, the 40+ men I ask to be subjects in my work, invariably all of whom have what we might call a ‘dad bod’, are unhesitatingly resistant.

As part of the photography workshop I attended recently, one of the tutors, Carolyn Drake, challenged me as to why I wasn’t in this project. She understood when I scoffed that hell would freeze over before that happened but her point was well made; apart from the obvious hypocrisy of asking/expecting other men to disrobe and being unwilling myself, there is also the important commentary about the subject of body image/body positivity to be made, especially from the male perspective as this is so frequently lacking or indeed ignored.

Spurred on by the reassurance of Carolyn’s genuinely humane and adroit observation, and the courage of other subjects such as Julian (I was fortunate to make the acquaintance of Julian recently, who has followed my work and shares my views on the importance of how men are seen and how the masculine is judged. He also shares my own negative body image challenge and yet he is courageous enough to disrobe and be photographed. I am both in awe of this and deeply grateful), I decided to photograph myself. I found a quiet spot in a forest, set the camera on a tripod with a self-timer and then proceeded to let all hang out.

Me

And hang out it did. The process of making the images wasn’t too bad, after all I see myself in a similar state of undress at least twice a day.  But reviewing the pictures, which offers a perspective as others see me, was an excruciatingly painful experience. I was genuinely filled with depression and despair; the notion that anyone in the future could find that writhing mound of blubber attractive evaporated as quickly as hope in a war zone. Given that I have in the last ten years lost 30 kilos as a result of fanatical dieting and riding upwards of 1000km a month on a pedal bike, it’s not that I don’t know how to remedy the situation. I know I can diet if I can find the motivation but the more important question is where does the repulsed reaction to my own body come from?

It’s interesting to think about this and subconsciously I’ve made a connection quite recently with the way society is very happy to use derogatory references to the male body as a way of shaming or belittling an individual.

One person in particular springs to mind. This individual is highly divisive in terms of popularity; some people love him, a lot hate him and by hate, I really do mean vile, contemptuous and caustically vitriolic burn in hell hate. The effigies you will see of this individual almost always focus very specifically on his weight and appearance and that is very telling. It is what is encoded in these images that is relevant here, for these effigies are specifically and unabigously designed to denude his relevance and individual power (precisely because he holds the highest office in the world, at least when it comes to the free world).

Julian

In case you hadn’t guessed I’m referring to Donal Trump. And yes, I think he’s an utterly repugnant individual and he’s transgressed the boundaries of decency if not also trust and the law and he probably doesn’t deserve to hold high office. However until we change the rules of representative democracy I guess we’re stuck with him.

Still, it is interesting that the grotesque caricatures of him all seem to focus on his weight (and the size of his penis). I can understand both of course but the irony of the political left using such body shaming images as a means to attack and cast aspersions as to his character and worth even as a human being let alone President, is at once both deeply hurtful to anyone else who sees themselves in that body shape, and utterly hypocritical. Imagine the furore if the shoe was on the other foot.

Besides, it probably does nothing to reduce Trumps inflated ego or his narcissism, but it does help perpetuate the notion that men, as much as women, need to conform to an ideal body shape if they are to be regarded as of use and value to society and of good character.

Julian

Of course this is only one example, but it is not alone and it is not just physical shape that is associated with character assassination. Our culture is obsessed with the perfect body and we regularly use it as a signifier of all the positive virtues and traits we are capable of. By contrast, popular culture is peppered routinely with negative body images that are specifically used to tell an audience that this is a bad person who is not to be trusted or who is unambiguously evil or is otherwise an inherently flawed character. Think about how many bond villains have been without some kind of physical ailment or impairment (come to think of it, how few female bond villains there have been), or how many leading men (or women) are of larger body types.

It’s not just body shaming that this project has also highlighted to me; it’s also the way in which male bodies are perceived in certain situations. Whilst photographing Julian in Stanmer Park this last weekend, there was a moment when a woman and her teenage daughter spied him, shirtless, well before they saw me photographing him. In the context of just seeing a half naked man in the park, her reaction was one of fear. Indeed, she confessed that she’d actually been in the process of dialling 999 before she realised what was actually happening.

Julian

I don’t blame her of course. Much as it would be very easy for me to highlight this as an example of how men are frequently regarded as a threat and how unconscious bias, borne out of a deeply matriarchal society, was responsible for this act of oppression, that would not just be churlish, it would be blatantly false.

Besides, unconscious bias is just a politically correct phrase du jour for what the ancient Greeks called heuristics. Of course seeing a half-naked man in a forest is going to elicit a danger response in anyone, most of all someone who is likely to be less physically capable of countering such a threat. But the experience was upsetting, especially and understandably for my subject Julian, who was visibly troubled by the encounter.

I don’t know what the solution is if any. I suspect that our obsession with the perfect body is itself based more on an evolutionary heuristic associated with health, vitality and reproductive viability and my own dissatisfaction with my body shape is the analogue of those things. Of course the easiest way to solve the problem is to lose some weight but then if I applied myself to undertaking the exercise I know I would need to do I’d probably have to stop taking pictures.

Application

I recently attended a workshop run by the very excellent @fotofilmic on the equally excellent Bowen Island, off the shore of Vancouver. If there is a more suitable place to lose yourself in a three day creative binge, I’ve yet to find it. The weather certainly helped. I had been worried that there would be a tension between wanting to head off with my camera to explore the island versus remaining indoors with the tutors. As it transpired it rained solidly for the three days of the workshop making that point moot, but even if it hadn’t, I would not have felt conflicted. The tutoring was excellent.

Denise & Marcello

The workshop was run over three days by three very different tutors. To get such high quality insight into your work from very different perspectives is rare and while the course was certainly not cheap, it was worth every cent. My initial motivation to attend was that one of the tutors was none other than @renaldiphotos, a photographer I’ve admired since I saw one of his touching (pun intended) portraits from the Touching Strangers project in ‘Read this if You Want to Take Great Pictures of People’. That was four years ago and was one of the motivations for me to start making my own portraits of strangers. It legitimized the idea that photographing strangers in a short moment was an authentic approach to portraiture.

Carolyn Drake – @drakeycake – and Lucy Conticello – @lucyconticello – rounded off the other two tutors. I confess I was not familiar with either of their work prior to the workshop (Lucy is a photo editor rather than a photographer though her referencing this throughout the workshop did leave me wanting to ask whether she didn’t also take photographs and therefore might not also be reasonably considered a photographer), but feel blessed for having discovered them both. Carolyn’s work in particular is quite special and offers a perspective so very different to my own (and Richard’s) that it enriched the overall learning process far beyond what I had anticipated.

In the plethora of ‘a-ha’ moments through the three days, the most insightful was the clear indication that I am not done with this photographing men without their shirts on project. Although I had instinctively felt this prior to the workshop, when the weather made a distinct and unambiguous left turn at the start of September, I felt that the opportunity to execute on a consistent theme was slipping away. As the flowers started to die off and the cooler air temperatures made it more difficult to persuade my subjects to disrobe, I reasoned that the project had to come to an end and I should move on to something else even though in my stomach I didn’t feel I had properly explored the subject.

Jacob

All three tutors encouraged me to continue exploring the themes so far developed and to use the changing of the seasons as a central locating idea to do that. Richard in particular pointed out that the changing colours in the landscape can be quite beautiful and Carolyn strongly suggested that I explore other body types, perhaps even my own (more on that in a subsequent post). Lucy explained the need to introduce more variety of composition and subject and so the work continues.

This frame is the result of that work. I’ve switched locations now, opting instead of the rusty colours of the October forest. I used to spend a lot of time up on the Surrey Hills riding my mountain bike but I haven’t been up there much in the last few years and it’s nice to be back. The challenges of finding willing subjects has indeed increased though the air temperature is just high enough to make it viable but still I struggled to get willing volunteers.

Ironically, Denise and Marcello were the first people I asked. The encounter was very rewarding and they both seemed very willing to engage and indulge me, though I am not as sure about the composition. The setting is really very different to what I have shot so far and the shift in location does feel like an abrupt and tangential change. Even if the subject matter is broadly the same, the shift in backdrop and composition (I am trying to discipline myself to shoot portraits in 5x4 landscape rather than always relying on 4x5 portrait), results in a radical shift in the feel of the image. I like it but only time will tell if the results are complimentary to the project.

Jacob was an equally rewarding but very different encounter. This was the other end of the day to Marcello and Denise, and the last person I asked. After failing to persuade anyone else the whole day to work with me, I had made my way back to the car park as the light faded. As I approached I could see a group of about six people getting into cars ready to leave. I could see their ages and sensed that this group would most likely be more receptive and so I literally ran over to try and engage them before they left. Jacob was easily the most obvious candidate; his head band and long hair (he told me people keep asking him if he’s Jesus Christ), so very distinctive and individual. It transpired that the group were all siblings, two brothers and a sister, all of whom live in the local village and all of whom were with their respective partners. This certainly helped as the siblings cajoled Jacob into taking part but the really lovely part was that it subsequently turned into an impromptu family photo shoot.

Siblings

I do like the resulting frame of Jacob; the colour palette was precisely what I had in mind and the light is soft. Ironically I should have used the ladder that Lucy Conticello suggested I employ. I had previously thought about this, even had a set in my car at one point, while shooting over the summer. I’d noticed that to get the angle right for the subject to be in the frame with the flowers without obscuring them I needed to be a little higher. It’s funny how your instincts can subsequently receive serendipitous validation. In this instance, I think the composition does need the additional height, even if it’s not needed for practical reasons in this frame (because there are no flowers as such),  I think the elevation of perspective is key to maintaining the sense of vulnerability in the subject that the project is built around.

Bowen Island Residents

Bowen Island is a pine covered rock approximately ten miles long and six miles wide nestled off the shore of Vancouver. It is home to a small community of approximately 10,000 people, a mix of perfectly normal families, artists and the very comfortably retired. It’s not so small or remote as to be a place of last refuge for those wanting to disappear for a while but it is the sort of place where you can reliably be on first name terms with at least half the people you see in your day and  you can buy pet food and cartridge toner from the same store. It has the vague feel of the wild frontier town where telegraph poles jostle for position with the spruce pines on the corner of mains street and cut granite bulges on the roadside are restrained by chicken wire cladding. In reality it’s a perfectly tame and otherwise very civilised community, the sort of place you would move to specifically to bring up children or focus yourself on becoming an artist, but it has just enough of a wilderness feel to it to endow it with a sense of charm and adventure.

Earle

I’ve been awake since 3.30am. After a long flight and tiring transfer via train, bus and boat across a rain soaked Vancouver, I foolishly lay down on my bed for just a moment, and then let sleep take me well before time. Right on que my body clock jump started me awake eight hours later, which just so happened to be 3.30am. I killed a few hours with aimless web browsing and then at 6am decided to venture out into the pitch night and the unlit roads and try to find a place for breakfast.

The place I found was the aptly named ‘The Snug’, a welcoming place that serves hearty plates of eggs and potatoes and heaps of hot strong coffee. Most of the early morning custom is from commuters parked up in the queue for the ferry that runs from the island to the mainland every hour. The boat, an ageing white whale of a thing with rust scarred sides and the sickly smell of marine diesel cloying the corridors, plugs directly into the end of main street like a construction set extension to a road which otherwise ends rather abruptly at the edge of the water.

The commuters are a diverse mix of people; some are dressed in smart suits, others in heavy waterproof jackets and trousers with even heavier boots that clump over the wooden floor. They have a look of Big Foot about them but given the fact that it’s properly tipping it down outside, you can see the logic. Among this mix is Earle, a weather worn figure in a faded and ripped red coat, wild nicotine stained beard and a craggy complexion. He looks like he has led a hard and physical life and might perhaps be mistaken as homeless. He pours a gallon of coffee into a stainless steel canteen, adds lots of cream and sugar, tests the brew and then leaves. I feel the prick of a missed opportunity but console myself with the fact that it’s still only 8am and the light from the recently risen sun is not making much of an impact through the heavy rain clouds.

I spend a good few hours in The Snug; I even leave a couple of time only to quickly return when it becomes apparent that the rain is not about to let up. When I do finally decide that my one day to explore on the island deserves a more concerted effort, I wander down main street towards the harbour and explore the few shops that there are in the hope of finding some waterproof trousers. Round the back of one shop is a wood veranda with a bench overlooking the pine forest mountain that rises up out of the side of the dark green harbour waters. On the bench is Earle, drinking his gallon of coffee and smoking a tightly rolled cigarette that is slowly adding to the amber colouring of his grizzly Adams beard. I get the second tingle of opportunity and open a conversation with him.

We talk for about an hour or maybe more. The conversation is not just interesting its enthralling. It’s not that I’m surprised by this, though his presentation is certainly such that I confess I had myself assumed he was homeless. But still the insight and interest with which he talked about his life as part ski guide in Whistler and part ski coach and technician to the Canadian Olympic ski team is fascinating. He spends his time now between Whistler in the ski season and Bowen Island in the summer where he ‘fixes things’. He is charming, interesting and easy to talk to.

When I ask to take his picture he is relaxed and happy to oblige, even commenting that he ‘sits very well’, as if he has been someone’s subject before and been told precisely this. It’s true as well; he finds an easy position quickly and settles himself in the light where I want him looking up the flanks of the steep sides of the harbour.

A little later I meet Ross and Tyler who are moving into their new home. I had overheard this as I walked by and wondered whether I had heard correctly. I wanted them to be a couple, dressed in their lumberjack check jackets, jeans and boots it would make a lovely and deliciously contradictory narrative. I pictured them looking for all the world like rugged, wilderness frontiersmen but embraced in a passionate kiss with the wet clouds evaporating slowly off the dense forest back drop. I figured a way to ask them politely but on approaching them, they kissed to say goodbye and my instinct was confirmed. They were happy to play out this narrative. I stood them in the middle of the road, as brazen as you dare and let them embrace and kiss.  

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer." — Albert Camus

This is the hardest time; both my summer project and the summer have run their course and now I am left bereft of both light and work. I need to find my next project but that will take time. For the moment I am left picking over the carcass of an otherwise well picked summer.

Two ladies from north Africa, enjoying the early evening sun in Hastings

On Being Vulnerable

I wrote this several months ago but have refrained from publishing it until now for various reasons.

I’m a whirlwind of emotions right now and not at all unsurprisingly. Since I published ‘Temptation’ (http://www.tearsinrain.co.uk/blog/2019/5/5/temptation )  and came ‘out out’ (as opposed to coming ‘out’ to my wife, I came ‘out out’ to the rest of the world and am now metaphorically stood in a night club at 2am, in my carpet slippers and holding a cut loaf and a pint of milk. Micky Flannigan fans will understand), my marriage has somewhat disintegrated and the decision has been made to divorce. Ironically it wasn’t me who jumped off the cliff first. That was, at least superficially, my wife’s decision, but in doing so she took me with her. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while (jump off a cliff) but have either lacked the courage to do or else have been overpowered by a sense of duty. Whatever the reality of the situation is, we’re now in free fall and the unwinding of 14 years of what was on so many occasions, an ‘incredibly challenging relationship’, is now bubbling to the surface and being downloaded directly, and rather compellingly, into my limbic system.

As these emotions flood in I find myself crashing into people. I acknowledged to a therapist this week that there was a lot of anger coming out as a result of this download and she asked me, quite reasonably, where that anger was going. It was the obvious question and it didn’t take me long to realise that it was probably at work (my day job) as that was where I found myself crashing into people, in particular a couple of people I really care about (sorry Rosalie). Acknowledging this phenomena is of course the best way to fix the problem and I feel somewhat rehabilitated already, but it did start a chain of thinking that I wanted to share.

I have for a while now intuitively felt that it is in our vulnerability that all our humanity lies. In acknowledging our vulnerability two things become possible.

First, because your vulnerability is inherently empowering to others, by being vulnerable in front of someone you bring that person closer to you; and the more you can make a real connection with that person, the more the humanity between you and the other person is likely to flourish.

Second, since anger is simply the mind’s way of coping with being vulnerable, by acknowledging and being comfortable with our vulnerability we dissipate our anger. It’s not that I think anger is a bad emotion (though I believe it is a largely negative rather than positive emotion, it is also entirely necessary in many instances), but it is at best just a precursor to something more constructive and at worst, an inhibitor to that. It’s almost like you have to pass through the anger in order to move forward, but sometimes the anger is hard to let go of;  it pulls and tugs at us and so we are held back. It is the emotional equivalent of running through treacle.

All of which sounds like cloying, new age sentimentality until you realise that there is some empirical research to back this up. A new acquaintance recently pointed me to a wonderful Ted talk by an even more wonderful woman called Brené Brown, who as a social scientist has done extensive research on the topic and articulates the concepts I have myself felt intuitively, in a more empirical way. You can see the talk here:

So, I acknowledge my vulnerability. I realise that my anger is just my way of trying to cope with the feeling of inadequacy and that my sense of inadequacy, of not being good enough, takes me on a fast track right back to the darkest places in my memory where I am eight years old again, sitting in a classroom of other children who hate me and listening to the teacher explain to them how they should just pretend that I am a ghost, pretend that I am not there and just ignore me. It’s a terrifying and hurtful place but it’s not a place I have to be if I can be OK with my vulnerability as an adult.

Of course, this is something that will also find its way into my photography work. It’s a concept I want to explore and is already starting to develop. Since mine is an inherently masculine perspective, but since vulnerability is perhaps more readily associated with the feminine, I will try to explore the masculine experience of vulnerability through as feminine a perspective as I can. I will say more about this in my next post but the image presented here represents the genesis of these ideas and the start of a new direction.