London

My home from home for many years, but it feels different now.

Darkness or Light

I am by nature an optimist, but today I see my world through jaundiced eyes. Many of the places I have visited, I would now be unable to go to, or at least I would be fearful of revisiting. War, instability, riots and starvation accompany an increasing number of corrupt, power-hungry and greedy oligarchs and autocrats.

Light, seen differently

Usually, we don't really think about light.

In fact, light is all we see, reflected off our world, furniture, a white wall perhaps, or a carpet. When I half-close my eyes, or lose focus for a moment, there sometimes seems to be another World, just beyond what I normally see, at the periphery and the in-between places, never fully visible. What is it there, beyond our vision?

Lensless, unfocussed; camera pointing at blank walls, ceilings, far off monotone landscapes. Pictures of nothing. But the camera and the computer know better. Light takes its own forms and creates fantastical shapes and colours.

Compositions

Sometimes, with no aim in mind except my feelings, I look at images and make compositions from them. I only keep those that show me something, feelings or uncertainty.

They may not have a narrative for anyone else, but look and decide for yourself. Each image says something different to me.

A Glass Cage

I recently visited an aquarium for the first time in many years. I was surprised by my sense of the wrongness of keeping creatures, that should live in the wide open seas, behind glass for my entertainment. I felt complicit and angry.

My images changed as I walked around. I wanted to reflect some sense of the wrongness and release my anger.

Sometimes Dark

New Zealand is a beautiful country. Bucolic and picturesque but, even there, climate change is having an effect and I witnessed flooding and a cyclone in the few weeks I was there.

I also saw a new or greater political tension there. The Maori still talk about the invaders who stole their land and the Government recognises that there have been multiple injustices. Even the popular Prime MInister has been deposed.

This peaceful land will change.

The Darkening Sea

The quiet evening looking out to sea can become forbidding and fearsome as the light dies. Shadows appear and seem to move, objects we know were there disappear. We can hear sounds but not see their source.

Nightmares and legends resurface and might be real.

Shadows

It's just an ordinary place but somehow it feels wrong.

Wait and be Silent

Looking for the Light

However dark the room seems, the camera can find traces of light. I can sometimes see a glimmer, from the corner of my eye, but it's gone when I focus. The camera doesn't blink and, if the light is there, the camera will show it to me.

Light can have a form of it's own. Like time, invisible to the naked eye, but not to the camera.