september 2018
51° 7' 46.9596'' N 1° 18' 40.104'' E
by some freakish accident, i lost most of the photos i took in Dover. this was around the time when i was starting to realise that the journey to making a living from commercial photography was peppered with all sorts of inconveniences - hit and miss marketing, aggressive networking, continuous improvement of gear and more importantly, rigorous file management and well thought out backup structures. most of these i was terrible at.
i deeply regret losing the pictures. i’d just moved to London with my partner and was barely scraping by, but i eventually gave in to her insistence on doing something fun for once. while i can no longer reminisce about “the days of yore”, there was definitely something pleasant, perhaps romantic about the circumstances - all doors seemed open, adult life had just begun and we had travelled away from the big city rather than to it.
though it would have not been the norm, our interactions were fraught with tension. i looked to improve upon this rather than let it slip, a sentiment echoed by her under most circumstances. part of the problem would have been a very specific strain of pathological behaviour on my part - years after the fact, i admitted to myself that the tethers i used to wrangle creative energies were all but fragile and my drive to “do better” had been pegged to her. it was a recipe for disaster.
more importantly, i hold numerous vivid memories of the time i had with her, yet this is one of the few that stand out as coherent and whole - the Cliffs of Dover, the South Foreland Lighthouse, the journey on foot in between. Deal, with its eerie historic streets, all seemingly deserted, or possibly the best meal i have ever had at the Frog and Scot. the cramped and cold b&b we lived in. the glacial purity of the light at dusk.
in a way, i’m starting to believe that documenting every aspect of our life together, whether good or bad, had the purpose of consecrating our shared existence. just to clarify - i loved photographing her and had been keen on putting together a photo album of sorts, not unlike those our predecessors would. perhaps i knew i could have never remembered all the details of this shared life if i’d actually tried - years of pent up stress, poor sleeping habits, as well as a fairly unhealthy lifestyle had started showing and i’d often fail to focus on the moments which mattered or would just... forget things. in a way, my relationship to my camera had been shifting - my creative aspirations had fed back into photographing everything about us (and more importantly, her) and with my gradual loss of memory and focus, it became a necessity of sorts to keep documentary evidence. as i look back at the four years i shared with her, i realise that i have in fact put together the most personal and (perhaps unnecessarily) detailed story i could have. paradoxically, by losing the photos from Dover, i ended up remembering much more. for once, there is a gap in that story which i am able to plug with my own “organic” memories, thus confirming the authenticity and personal nature of the entire endeavour. moreover, whatever it was that drove her also meant regular destruction of “documents” such as photographs, which would in many cases mean that i’d be the custodian of our shared history.
nonetheless, i understand the necessity of such a long term exercise (comparatively, at least). it was all necessary, for without it i would have never understood what telling a visual story really means.
she was neither a visual experiment, nor purely an object of desire. instead, the more i think about it, the closer i come to the realisation that i admired her. for a camera-obsessed freak like myself, photographing would have been one of the best ways of materialising my admiration.
absent but not forgotten; the camera and i remember.
september 2018
51° 7' 46.9596'' N 1° 18' 40.104'' E
by some freakish accident, i lost most of the photos i took in Dover. this was around the time when i was starting to realise that the journey to making a living from commercial photography was peppered with all sorts of inconveniences - hit and miss marketing, aggressive networking, continuous improvement of gear and more importantly, rigorous file management and well thought out backup structures. most of these i was terrible at.
i deeply regret losing the pictures. i’d just moved to London with my partner and was barely scraping by, but i eventually gave in to her insistence on doing something fun for once. while i can no longer reminisce about “the days of yore”, there was definitely something pleasant, perhaps romantic about the circumstances - all doors seemed open, adult life had just begun and we had travelled away from the big city rather than to it.
though it would have not been the norm, our interactions were fraught with tension. i looked to improve upon this rather than let it slip, a sentiment echoed by her under most circumstances. part of the problem would have been a very specific strain of pathological behaviour on my part - years after the fact, i admitted to myself that the tethers i used to wrangle creative energies were all but fragile and my drive to “do better” had been pegged to her. it was a recipe for disaster.
more importantly, i hold numerous vivid memories of the time i had with her, yet this is one of the few that stand out as coherent and whole - the Cliffs of Dover, the South Foreland Lighthouse, the journey on foot in between. Deal, with its eerie historic streets, all seemingly deserted, or possibly the best meal i have ever had at the Frog and Scot. the cramped and cold b&b we lived in. the glacial purity of the light at dusk.
in a way, i’m starting to believe that documenting every aspect of our life together, whether good or bad, had the purpose of consecrating our shared existence. just to clarify - i loved photographing her and had been keen on putting together a photo album of sorts, not unlike those our predecessors would. perhaps i knew i could have never remembered all the details of this shared life if i’d actually tried - years of pent up stress, poor sleeping habits, as well as a fairly unhealthy lifestyle had started showing and i’d often fail to focus on the moments which mattered or would just... forget things. in a way, my relationship to my camera had been shifting - my creative aspirations had fed back into photographing everything about us (and more importantly, her) and with my gradual loss of memory and focus, it became a necessity of sorts to keep documentary evidence. as i look back at the four years i shared with her, i realise that i have in fact put together the most personal and (perhaps unnecessarily) detailed story i could have. paradoxically, by losing the photos from Dover, i ended up remembering much more. for once, there is a gap in that story which i am able to plug with my own “organic” memories, thus confirming the authenticity and personal nature of the entire endeavour. moreover, whatever it was that drove her also meant regular destruction of “documents” such as photographs, which would in many cases mean that i’d be the custodian of our shared history.
nonetheless, i understand the necessity of such a long term exercise (comparatively, at least). it was all necessary, for without it i would have never understood what telling a visual story really means.
she was neither a visual experiment, nor purely an object of desire. instead, the more i think about it, the closer i come to the realisation that i admired her. for a camera-obsessed freak like myself, photographing would have been one of the best ways of materialising my admiration.
absent but not forgotten; the camera and i remember.
