What has photography ever done for me?
Introduction
I spent a week considering this question and covered six sheets of A3 with diagrams, notes and ideas in my attempt to answer it. Then I tried to organise it all and thereby find a structure for this project. Suddenly I had another page of possibilities which were all neat, plausible and logical (I’m sure you’d expect that of me – I have that kind of mind, after all). But, in the nick of time, I remembered that I'm exploring my wellbeing, creativity and self-expression, not writing computer code! So, instead of looking for an orderly master plan – the type my engineering mind admires so much – I’ve decided to go freeform. Well, I'll try to!
Lincoln Cathedral
My photographic life comprises three phases – first there’s the 70s/80s; my more recent art-photography is last; and, inbetween, there's the digital learning stage. Each stage is distinctively different, so it makes sense to look at each separately – that’s been an easy decision to make.
But after that it's less clear-cut. And this is where I hope I'll be able to go ' freeform' – let things develop organically, exploring each stage in whatever way suits it best (rather than answer a set of pre-determined questions). I’ll just start by looking at the different notes I’ve made and see where they take me. I’ll see if there’s photographic evidence to support the different ideas, or whether I'm mostly drawing on my memory, or whether, like the benefits of wellbeing, it’s lockdown and the absence of photography and woodland walks which is the strongest evidence.