Tessa

West Wittering beach is a popular destination for all kinds of people but at peak times it becomes something more akin to Blackpool or Coney Island than the windswept coast of southern Britain. The best times to visit are late afternoon in the depth of winter. As the tide goes out at the end of the day, the wide expanse of revealed glossy beach becomes like mirror on which subjects seem to float.

 I met Tessa randomly, drawn by her incredible beauty and brightly coloured clothing. Her composure and serenity did indeed make her float with an ethereal loveliness on the mirrored surface of the sand.

I am often drawn to people whose appearance and presentation is such that it can trigger physical attraction in the viewer irrespective of the subject’s gender or the viewer’s sexual preference. My experience of Tessa, and I confess to being a little bashful in admitting this, is that her age was also be irrelevant in my experiencing that attraction. I confess I have always had a bit of thing for older women, but, well Tessa is quite a bit more than just a few years older than me.

Onesies, Dogs & Geronimo

The group is clearly visible as silhouettes on the skyline; a whirly gig of adults and children hunkered down on top of the most exposed sand dune that is catching the full force of the offshore wind that’s pushing over the long grass and kicking up little sandstorms here and there. It’s hard to tell whether swirling, chaotic movement in the group is the result of the wind blowing them around or the unbridled energy of the children let loose to play among the sand dunes. A few moments of watching shows it’s clearly the latter. There are three females with what I presume are their respective children. I don’t know where their fathers are, probably playing golf or something and I muse that I know without any doubt where I’d much rather be.

The children are laughing and cavorting almost dangerously among the dunes. In places the sides are cliff like, the drops up to three maybe four metres but they are all cushioned by deep drifts of sand and so the risk of falling has actually become something of a game. I remember a childhood holiday in Tenby, South Wales, where each day at low tide the portable walkway that allowed foot passengers to board the ferry to Caldy Island would be pushed back onto the beach. It was maybe two metres high though aged five it felt more like four or five and that sense of height made the game of Geronimo we invented for the holiday all the more thrilling. This involved our newly formed holiday gang climbing onto the walkway and then launching ourselves in one long line off the platform while shouting ‘Geronimo’ as loud as we could. The landing was cushioned but it still felt like a thrill.

I love the pastoral feel to this images. As ever the trepidation of pointing a camera at children on a beach, even ones fully clothed in onesies, piqued my nerves but the joy, movement and fun filled chaos was too good to miss. I wasn’t even using a long lens. At one point all hell broke loose as the dogs from other families broke loose and hurtled into the group to make friends with their own dog. In a moment of almost pure comedy gold, a large Dalmatian and a scruffy looking whippet started chasing each other in continuous circle, revolving around the three women sitting in the ground as if they were pioneers encircled by native Americans.  

I don’t know why I’ve not been to West Wittering beach before but it is certainly my new favourite place and somewhere to take the boys for their own sand dune adventures.

The Shadow - Jerry

I randomly met Jerry earlier this year while on a camera walk around my old student haunts in Sheffield. He was outside tending to his garden wearing an army surplus jumper and fatigues held up by bright red braces. With his 80s post punk hair and smart glasses he looked every inch the individual character he later turned out to be. Our connection however was more his doing than mine. While his idiosyncratic but still dapper appearance had certainly caught my eye, it was he who made the introduction by commenting on my camera. We chatted for about ten minutes; I took his picture outside but really in my head I was eyeing up the tall window of the Victorian building he lived in and thinking how amazing the light would be inside. I confess I rather invited myself in to see if we might take a picture inside and ended up spending a good hour chatting over tea.

The light inside was indeed wonderful but really, I needed a tripod (which I didn’t have with me) and probably a wider angle lens (which I didn’t even own at the time) in order to make the most of the situation.

Since I was back up visiting my mum over Christmas, I thought I would try to reconnect with Jerry and see if we might make a follow up portrait. Part of my development this year has been to start doing more arranged portraits with people at their homes rather than relying on the serendipity of the chance encounter. This has been necessary, not just from a developmental perspective, but because in order to continue the development of the ‘Here Among the Flowers’ project I felt I needed to broaden the theme to include other aspects of masculinity. In order to maintain thematic coherence, the focus shifts from the Jungian concept of the anima (the internal feminine) to that of ‘the shadow’, the unconscious aspect of our personality.

The Shadow incorporates those facets that our conscious ego does not identify in itself. While not wholly negative, since it is in our nature to reject the darker sides of our character, it is into the shadow that we tend to push those aspects that we are less comfortable with. As with the anima/(animus), full development of our ego depends on integrating our conscious being with the Shadow.

As with the Anima, portraying this theme requires a certain amount of stripping back of the subject’s protective outer layers but it also needs a different approach to the light. Shooting indoors seems like both the right aesthetic approach and the required practical approach given the winter weather. It means the subject can either be completely nude (which is another fascinating developmental experience), or else more readily shirtless without the weather being the limiting factor.

Jerry lives frugally and amid an overwhelming mix of chaos and style. His flat is a maelstrom of cubby of empty bottles waiting to be recycled, ancient audio equipment held together with insulation tape and wardrobes bursting with stylish suits, houndstooth coats and Jeffrey West shoes. The dimply lit stairwell is home to half a dozen bikes, some I remember as design classics from my childhood (Kirk Precision cast magnesium bike anyone?) and on the window ledge in his sitting room, a demi john sits half full of a cloudy yellowing and potent looking liquid that is apparently apple wine yet to be tested. He has two cats that sleep in various old draws that are dotted around the flat. The walls are adorned with various curios, Knick knacks and photographs of his daughter, with whom he maintains a great relationship. He had a penchant for dressing as the dapper gentleman and his collection of couture is well developed, sophisticated and highly individual.  

After we took these pictures, we went for a stroll on to the top of Stanage Edge, a gritstone outcrop high on the Peak moorland where I used to climb as a student. The weather was bracing; the fog thick on the rusty red heather giving the place a very ‘Wuthering Heights’ feel. That metaphor was apt for the character of Heathcliff is himself the very personification of the Shadow.

I confess I don’t quite understand jerry just yet, but I am drawn to him. He is at once both complex and yet unpretentious. He has a deep authenticity that perhaps places him at the fringes of the mainstream and I suspect he hides a darker and more brooding side to his nature, buried in his shadow. But it is for precisely these reasons that I am drawn to him and for what photographing him can tell us about our humanity, both the positive side and our less visible darker side.

The Congregation of St Bartholomew's Chhurch

The saying ‘You can take the x out of the y but you cannot take the y out of the x’ is an overused trope but it this instance it happens to also be correct.

You can take the boy out of Catholicism but you cannot take Catholicism out of the boy.

So it is with me. I shed the last vestiges of my Catholic upbringing a long time ago and while I am now surer of the non-existence, than I am the existence, of God, still there is a small part of me that is drawn to the Church. It is a part motivated more by a fascination with place, ceremony and most importantly, memory, but still it is there and it only takes the smell of incense to trigger those powerful memories of a cold stone floor as it touched my bare right knee and sitting on hard wooden benches.

I pop into the local Catholic church from time to time just to trigger and indulge in a little nostalgia. Catholic churches have an interesting architectural and design consistency wherever you go in the UK. Mostly they look and feel like buildings designed and fitted in the 70s; their relative modernity compared to their Anglican brethren being the result of our country’s history of religious intolerance. There is always a heavy emphasis on iconography; stations of the cross will adorn the wall in narrative order telling the story of Christ’s crucifixion. There will be a side alter with candles for offerings to the Virgin Mary and a conspicuous confessional booth placed in such a way as to virtually announce the sins of the occupants to the congregation without revealing the identity of those occupants. And of course there will often be the smell of incense in the air, a perfumed aroma that evokes a sense of both the divine and the opulent.

St. Bartholomew’s in Brighton is Anglican in denomination but it is very ‘high’ Anglican, meaning that it is about as close to the Catholic tradition as you can be without tipping into the truly magical realm of transubstantiation. It represents a religious tradition and practise that is unequivocally dying out in modern Britain. I’m not sure I quite mourn that loss, but I do also recognise that many otherwise positive values will be lost as a result. They can of course be replaced by other things; theology does not remotely have a monopoly on moralistic behaviour.

Perhaps the obvious loss are the people; step into Bartholomew’s on a Sunday around noon and you cannot fail to notice that the vast majority of the congregation are easily into their 70s, some many older. On this particular Sunday, I had decided to pop in to say hello to Freida, the 92 year old lady I had photographed a few weeks previously; my encounter with her is a few blog posts back. As I approached the door I noticed an exceptionally smartly dressed couple about to leave. Around the side of St. Bartholomew’s the church wall borders onto a rarely used road and on that wall there is always brightly coloured graffiti. A window on the building opposite acts as a reflector to bounce the sun in small pools of dappled light directly onto this graffiti. Seeing the smartly dressed couple about the exit the church I suddenly thought how interesting it would be to contrast their gentrified attire against the more urban graffiti. I wasn’t sure I would persuade them into this idea and I confess that System One thinking immediately reached for the heuristic that tells us that people who dress like this are likely to be highly conservative and dismissive of fanciful or auteur creative ideas.

Much to my surprise (and shame) they agreed, though I was reminded that the cold weather would mean I had only a little time to make my image. Patience did seem a little thin but it is hardly surprising as the narrow road does act to funnel the wind and the chill. I pushed that patience as far as it would go to try and get the couple standing in just the right position for the light from the window reflection to fall on their face and just about managed it.

I like this image for a number of reasons. First, I do adore to contrasting narratives especially as the smartly dressed couple’s presentation isn’t just a representation of a particular style but also of a particular set of values that are changing and disappearing. But second, I like this image because it reminds me that System One thinking is indeed lazy and often reaches for the closest heuristic when it should actually get out of the comfy chair in which it loafs and make more of an effort.  

This smartly dressed couple were charming, engaging, kind and gentle. I felt a tinge of guilt for having subconsciously harboured ideas that if not necessarily unkind, were definitely inaccurate and unfounded.

Digital or Analogue - Why do You Care?

Film or digital? Two images, one shot on film the other digitally, can you tell the difference? Both are medium format, both shot at ISO400 and both at f/4 although there is a difference in focal length and thus in the depth of field. Can you tell the difference, do you prefer one over the other, do you care?

Image A

 I feel we are at the point where we run the risk of over romanticising film and pushing it towards pretention and affectation. Shooting film doesn’t automatically make your images better, more interesting or more compelling (as these two versions of an otherwise dull composition illustrate) and yet the cult following that a few overtly analogue photographers have garnered suggests otherwise.

Image B

 Having shot film I can appreciate the virtues of the process and how that can change the output and become something personally very important to the photographer. But that experience is just that, it’s personal to the photographer in the moment they make the image and is irrelevant to anyone else viewing the image, for the most part at least.

 There does come a point when the aesthetic beauty of the image encourages you to want to understand how it was made; Richard Learoyd would be a perfect example of this, highlighting the fact that the very reason these images look as aesthetically beautiful as they do is precisely because they were made in the way they were. But then, the substrate on which Learoyd records his images is perhaps less relevant than the size of the image plane on which the recording was made (notwithstanding the fact that it would be almost impossible to create a digital recording surface that large).

 Don’t get me wrong, process is clearly a key variable in the quality of your work and in so far as an analogue process contributes to that quality, we should romanticise the virtues of film over digital. My point is, is that it is not necessary to produce great work; your process can be just as effective shooting digitally. Why then do we care so much about the substrate; why are there so many channels, publications and even competitions that will specifically exclude one set of images purely because of the substrate on which they were captured? It’s almost as bad as judging someone’s work based on their gender! Oh wait, hang one, we do that one as well don’t we…..

Eloise

I’m surveying the Level skate park with my camera in hand. I’m looking for potential takers in for the Here Among the Flower project but even though it’s a Sunday afternoon and it’s not actually raining, it is very wet and the Level is quiet. There are no takers but since this is my only day to be out with my camera I decide to look elsewhere.

I see the Eloise happily roller-skating around the area outside the skate park. She’s happily rolling around with that naive sense of balance that just about keeps her the right sight up but looks like it’s never more than a heartbeat away from a first aid kit. She finishes her lap and tiptoes back across the grass in her skates to where her mum and dad are relaxing on a bench. It’s a perfect picture of childhood and instinct screams that it would be a wonderful picture but the logical part of my brain kicks in and dismisses the idea. I would never photograph a child without permission – even though personally I don’t think that doing so is inherently wrong – but as Martin Parr said, ‘Who needs the aggro?’

I consider the possibility of approaching her parents to ask if they would be comfortable with a photograph but the memory of past experiences, of being openly accused with no more justification than being a man with a camera in a park (and therefore obviously a threat) take a good hold of my amygdala and start to throttle it.

In the end it is the parents who start to talk to me and so I make a decision to take the risk and broach the subject. There’s too much potential joy to miss and what harm can it do to ask. I adopt a very honest and open approach, acknowledging that what I am asking is potentially controversial and not meant to cause any offence. I admit to being nervous and thankfully I am able to convince them that I am not a threat. I am genuinely grateful for their trust and good will and feel that some sense of the spirit of human kindness is still alive.

There is a moment when introducing myself, her father introduces himself and before her mother has had a chance to make her own introduction, Eloise introduces her to me on her behalf.

“And this is Sarah” she says with all the charm and confidence of someone twice her age. It is a lovely moment and her maturity is so out of the expected character I catch myself and ask openly if Sarah is indeed her mother. Of course she is, but in that single moment Eloise establishes herself as her own person.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of Eloise’s parents’ good character is that they leave the decision up to Eloise. If she would like a photograph then she can make that decision and she readily agrees.  

It takes a few minutes for Eloise to compose herself; she has the instinct to laugh either through excitement or embarrassment or more likely both and while that makes for great family photo’s, it’s not what I’m looking for. I want a composed moment of serenity, something that demonstrates the maturity and poise she showed a moment ago. I’m not sure I found it in this image but the experience is what counts and the restoration of faith in humanity and the opportunity to celebrate a joyful childhood moment counts far more to me and, I hope, to Eloise and her parents.

Yoga & Economics

I spent the better part of 11 years, from the age of 19 to 30 training diligently in a very traditional style of Karate. Far from being a Japanese martial art, Karate originated on the small island of Okinawa, part of the Ryukyu chain of islands off the south coast of Japan. And far from being simply a Japanese outpost, Okinawa was originally ethnically and politically independent, with its own culture and language and strong sense of identity.

Ryukyu translates as ‘like a short length of rope thrown on the floor’, the shape of the rope resembles the shape of the chain of islands. Those islands became strategically important during the second world war and the Battle of Okinawa was one of the hardest fought and most costly for both sides. Much of the island’s cultural heritage, including many of the next generation of Karate-Ka were lost.

I was trained by a very senior instructor who placed much emphasis on physical conditioning, including stretching and flexibility. He himself took inspiration from many additional sources including a close personal friend of his who was a very advanced Yogi. Consequently we would regularly practise elements of yoga including the ‘salute to the sun’.

This is how I came to be speaking with Hanna and Pete. Hannah teaches yoga and was doing the salute to the sun, or at least a version of it, on the beach in between skimming stones and enjoying the sunset. Seeing her flexibility reminded me that I used to be similarly limber; heck youth is just so wasted on the young!

Peter is currently studying economics. They are an interesting couple and I wonder what they will make of their lives, how well their plans will go, whether they will stay together or find different people to spend their lives with.

The light was fading pretty quickly and hadn’t been all that good the whole day. In the last moments of the afternoon the breaks in the clouds on the horizon where the sun sets allowed enough light to filter through. The red and yellow buoy made a perfect prop, adding colour and giving them something to recline on.