The sequence is complete, the words are written, the proofs have been approofed. Woodwork is signed off and with the printers. With any luck I should have the first stock in the early part of June. A little later than I hoped but entirely my own fault for faffing until the last of my self imposed deadlines whizzed by. Here’s the cover, a previously unpublished image from the deepest end of winter in West Sussex back in 2023.
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On Making Decisions
At the end of 2022 I finally managed to publish my first book ‘Fieldwork’. After dancing around the idea for several years it was the weirdness of COVID and lockdowns that gave me the space and time to think more deeply about what the book was really about and how to get it into realistic shape for printing. The enforced pause on making new work also helped me think of that body of work as ‘finished’ enough to commit to print (at least as a volume one).
The success of that book led me to I think it might be easier to finish the second more quickly. ‘Woodwork’ has always been intended as the partner to ‘Fieldwork’ and so lots of decisions are already made. I know the format, the paper stock, even the fonts. I have a lovely InDesign document that lets me move images around at will, a pile of test prints to shuffle around my desk or pin on my wall. I can (and have) spent many happy hours making version after version of the book that I’m happy with, convincing myself that I am making decisions and being productive, but also secretly aware that I am just repeatedly shuffling the same pack of cards and getting no closer to dealing them.
I need to get this finished by the end of March, with the hope of having it ready for sale during May, but I find self imposed deadlines the hardest to hit. The next few weeks is the time to be brutal and edit with a more dispassionate head on, but this time I’ll be doing it alongside the distractions of day to day retail gallery life and all the while heading into a busy time of year in the beach. MakingProperDecisions® is one of the things I am least good at. Wish me luck.
On Loitering
Asterisk. A new image for my ‘Fieldwork’ collection. This was the product of several days and weeks loitering in a particular spot near the edge of a field, waiting for an interesting mix of stormy light and heavy clouds to pass by this little slice of the Downs. Lots of hope, mostly nope. But stand in one place long enough and you get to meet all sorts of interesting people. I ended up chatting to most of the local residents of the nearby cottages, the landowner, walkers, cyclists and of course all of their many dogs. I watched buzzards and kestrels overhead and got to know a nearby tree rather well, particularly each time it rained. Satisfying to eventually find the picture I was after, but much more fun to have made some new and surprising connections.
Asterisk. Kingston, East Sussex. November 2023.
On slowing down
I turn out not to be a very frequent contributor to my own blog. So far, so unsurprising. I have a bit of history of starting projects with a lot of enthusiasm and not quite seeing them through (or being distracted by the next exciting thing). Perhaps it’s enough to get something written here very few weeks, assuming I have anything much to say. Whats the blog equivalent of Ansel Adams ‘twelve significant photographs in any one year’?
Lately I’ve been trudging through what’s felt like a prolonged fallow period with photography. Which is not to say that I haven’t been trying to make new work. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time loitering in a nearby field waiting for the ‘right’ light; exploring some new woods with the imminent completion of my next book ‘Woodwork’ in mind; and swimming in a few new spots along the Sussex coast to see the sea from a different angle. But on the whole, I’m just not quite clicking with what I’m making so most of it remains unprinted and unpublished. The pictures may have some merit, but for some reason I seem increasingly unable to see it in the few days immediately after making them. There’s something to be said for letting the pictures sit for a while, and coming at them later with a more objective eye, and it helps break me out of the social media habit of posting the newest, latest, not always greatest into the void. The sideways benefit of this is that I am reminded to revisit work from the last few years that I felt similarly unconnected with at the time, but which make more sense now with some distance and less emotional attachment to the excitement or frustration of making them. This isn’t a very efficient way of working, but it seems to be mine.
Ignoring the dress code. South Downs, November 2021.
On starting again.
So here I am again, blogging like it’s 2001. I probably should be doing substack or something, but one step at a time. I don’t really do YouTube, I persist with Instagram but it feels like a slog, Facebook was ditched years ago. Twitter was fun but I’m not sure it has long left and Threads is so shallow that it’s hard to dive in. So where to post some new work, where to ramble on about whatever is in my head when I’m out on the hills or floating around in the sea. Where to collect the photographs that may never make it to the gallery as prints, the work that might make a book one day or might never make it beyond a hard drive? Where to deposit the odd little photographic obsessions and mini-projects that I seem to make from time to time. Maybe it’s here, let’s see…
Wallnot tree. Brighton, May 2023.