Writing with light, finding the truth

Friday Fragment #20

Photography is many things: a way of capturing an event or subject for the record, perhaps for posterity. For the last seven or eight years, it’s been a means of making a living, and a way of continuing to work within and explore further the wide and varied world of food. My own affair with food, though never a love affair per se, started with my first career-focused job in an independent book publishing house at the age of twenty-one. Food has never quite ignited within me the passion that I am aware burns in others. It’s a subject that I’m occasionally fascinated by, almost always quite interested in, and about which I’m fairly knowledgeable. But it’s never been my reason for getting up in the morning (although the eating of food often has been). And that’s true for photography, too. It’s never been and never will be the great passion of my life despite it bringing me creative pleasure and providing me with an income. I was giving all of this some thought a couple of days ago whilst with some quiet time to reflect, sat alone at the back of a chapel, saying a last goodbye to an old friend. Two eulogies each described a life and observations on that life; the things she did and the effect that she had on others. I considered my own overwhelming memory of her, and of her husband who passed away a couple of years previously, and concluded that they were probably two of the kindest people I’d ever known. I recognised that kindness is a value I admire greatly, something I’ve articulated my thoughts about previously, and something I’ve aspired to in my own life. I sat there contemplating how good a husband, son, brother, friend, parent and provider I’ve been, because these boxes were also ticked emphatically that day during the service for my friend. I guess we rarely make time to stop and ask ourselves some of these big(ger) questions – what we are doing and why we are doing it. The day before the funeral, I had been working at a restaurant in Bristol – a typical enough kind of shooting brief. After an hour or so of photographing dishes on the terrace, I moved my set-up indoors and placed a plate of monkfish tail onto the table just inside the door, stood back and instantly felt a kind of elation. I hadn’t yet taken a picture, not even held the camera to my eye, but had merely found the most beautiful light. The discovery of light or, more accurately, reacquainting myself with the beautiful varied ways that light falls across objects, is the reason that I take pictures. It’s really a reconnection to the same wonder that fascinated me as a young art student, mesmerised by the chiaroscuro language of Caravaggio, and the soft triangles of reflection across the cheek of a Rembrandt subject. And it’s the same hypnotism that took hold of me staring up at the walls and ceiling of my childhood bedroom and watching the passing beams of car headlights spill and refract into alcoves and corners. Photography is both a truth and a falsehood. To capture exactly what we see with the eye is not to record the truth, but merely to hold a mirror as steadily as one can. The truth is found in the ‘fullness’ of experiencing something, almost the ‘feelingness’ of what we are photographing. I shot lobster, scallops and lemon posset in that same restaurant space and each looked beautiful, felt wonderful in that dramatic light. Photography is ‘to draw with light’. Perhaps these fragments are to write with something of that same light. This kind of drawing, this type of writing, is the passion that burns brightest inside of me. If others enjoy or remember anything of what I create or do, I hope it might be that I’ve managed on occasion to bring something beautiful into that light, drawn or written well, and enabled it to connect and resonate with others.

‘Friday Fragment’ is an additional weekly instalment to my A Thousand Fragments monthly newsletter.