In the late 1990's I had a breakdown that ultimately led me, through a journey that took me away from depression, to a new career in photography. What made all the grit of the dark days worthwhile was that I was left with something that felt like a pearl - a new way of seeing and interacting with things - more sensual, emotive and visual. These posts explore different ways of seeing and experiencing our world.
The photographs act like wormholes into the time they were taken, and are often the instigators of the stories that I tell within this digest; but more than that, amidst bouts of punishing low self-esteem, they remind me that I’m not an imposter, that I’m worthy of the places I photograph.
" ...there are magical places, curated by our forebears, that allow us to escape feudal time, to bathe in an alternative chronology."
As I cycle along the wall, I take in each stone as ballast.
Across a building extruded from the Triassic and Jurassic this isn't just a parable of faith, but also the story of the cosmos itself and our part in it.
Weighed down with the complexities of modernity, I stand before the porch of St. Peter and St. Paul and take on the mantra of Bacon's Novum Organum.
If I were a Banksy or an Emin, and presented the world with an object that had been shaped by the collated, nuanced press of several thousand people over five hundred years, I’d think I was onto something.
"I find it hard to think how anything like this can survive the perils of our times."
I plumped for Birdoswald and missed the opportunity of ever seeing one of the most photographed trees in the country. On 28 September the tree was unlawfully cut down in the dark hours.
"Like a precious baubled ring, the carving becomes the clawed setting, the movement of light upon it the jewel."