“You might have been enough the man you are with striving less to be so”

Coriolanus

Some people are a black hole; they’ll take everything.  When the time comes for something in return it’s like nothing ever happened.  Smart people don’t telegraph, smarter people than me.  Honour is a blunt instrument subtle as a heart attack, but this accent lets those know that carpets are flat for a reason.

Somethings got to give.  Barnaby says he’s an ex-London lawyer turned musician.    Posh accent, tall, high opinion of himself, well educated, sharp eyes- interesting guy.  That evening, he said some of the most stupid things I have ever heard.  A little less sharp and a little more smooth to my right was a warm and amicable New Yorker, a salt of the earth American type- interested in listening to others rather than himself and a core understanding that didn’t rest on a private education but on empirical attention.

Maybe it’s a romantic idea to think that we are all our own character and will be whatever we choose, free to live our own destiny.  In many ways I don’t think that’s true, that our circumstances are the bigger factor in our lives.  But we are this person predisposed to behaviour in a way that film is to the colour of light- able to react, but capable of doing so with a unique signature that becomes distinctive over time.

I think a bigger problem is becoming our increasingly warped understanding of that time.  The modern world is fast.  There’s no time for film, shoot digital.  No time for records, play mp3s.  No time for print, go online.  More quantity, less detail.

Speed alters everything, especially perception.  We should take a longer view of people which starts with slowing down to a pace where we can ignore what’s trivial and start to really appreciate what’s important.  Not to forget that it’s usually the special ones that take time to reveal their true colours.

18:30, she walks straight up to me without a slip or a slur, motions for me to take out my earphones,

“I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but…”

I don’t know what to say, or why I’m even writing about it, but it’s surely because a total stranger went completely out of her way to make a connection during the commute- a time when almost everybody seems to make every conceivable effort to avoid each other, to be completely disconnected.

Irrespective of what she said, in that moment she understood more than anyone there that one of the most important things in this life is making connections with other people.  Did strangers stop talking to each other?  When it happens, it freaks some people out, but only for a split second before they realise that this is what we are designed to do and like breathing, it happens without thought.  I’ve been living in a city too long.

Sometimes it’s incredibly easy for me to completely forget how weird this world is.  And how the things that would seem the most normal exist only in a part of distant memory that couldn’t possibly be true.  Just like all the others, I am now lost in that spell that would have me believe that I am travelling to my life, seeming to forget that what’s present is the only thing that will ever exist.

“Why are you helping me?”

“Because I know who you are”

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So I recently sold the camera rig I’ve been working towards for years now, ever since I saw someone with it outside Downing Street when I was 18 and thought “some day”- the standard double camera press kit.  After working with large ego boosting cameras, I very quickly came to the understanding that this is not for me, and the feeling of people looking, I’ve had enough of that already as a redhead, with a huge camera, it’s just too much.  Now I’m working with a small rangefinder and a 5x4.  I think it has something to do with the idea that going chasing a story is an exhausting profession, and also to do with the fact that I’ve realised I have less desire to witness things than I have to take part. It’s also the maintenance of my ambivalence.  Also the intention that I will make the project, rather than being a critical witness to an extraordinary event.  And ‘catch’ pictures; after looking at more than 5, the ‘perfect’ and ‘decisive moment’ very quickly becomes very very boring; last year at Derby’s street photography themed Format Festival really brought that home.  I think the idea of being a photographer is a romantic one and the reality is very different, as is any passion as profession.  When I tell people what I’m studying they say “cool” and I wonder why they say that.

Still, walking around with my little rangefinder I continue to look at people with their huge heavy SLR beasts and feel comfortable that I made the right choice.  When I receive my negatives I know that I made the right choice.

I have something to say, and that something is not that I was a witness.  It’s a statement about the world that I hope will alter our relationship with it.