Friday Afternoon Confessionals.....

Two weeks ago I landed in Boston, One week ago I landed back in London, when things move rapidly, all we can do is hang on and try our best to navigate the ride!

This afternoon as I write this, looking out at the sunshine, blue sky and peacefulness, I am 100% sure everyone everywhere is still feeling the surreal-ness of the situations we are adjusting to - I’m not going to harness that, instead I’m sharing my trip back to Maine, the walks I took in nature + the portraits at a distance I created + a couple of shots from my phone of the amazing colours I’m seeing on my daily walks x

So Maine, my spiritual haven, hmmm perhaps better to say my photographic haven where the photo magic first happened. A workshop back at my old school with my fabulous professor learning carbon transfer printing.

All the info I had read ahead of class told me just how tricky it was - AND IT IS!! BUT it was also really wonderful to be connecting with the photographic process and craft back in the dark room after quite a long time away. I used one of my images of one of my brides + for a first attempt it has encouraged me to experiment further when the time is right and to take this process and see where it takes me…….

This trip also enabled me to get back in to deep nature and embrace the sea air and sunsets!!! The light has always been magical in Maine and now home on my evening walks I am also seeing slithers of it here too :-)

I also had EVERY INTENTION of continuing my International Women’s Day project photographing friends and I people I knew with the theme ‘friendship’ . With lock down swift in America I respectfully kept my distance from the two ladies I had the opportunity to photograph and above is ‘Pam’ my airbnb host. When I return I’ll photograph the others I didn’t catch on this trip :-) but it was great to even capture these!!

And so to home. Just on my iphone but maybe I’m being more vigilant, a bit more aware of my surroundings but I am loving the colours that are appearing in the evenings, soft tones and hues, pastels and patches of light highlighting the landscape that would in the past not necessarily caught my attention…..maybe I brought a bit of the magic back with me…stay safe + healthy everyone!! xx

International Women's Day 2020

Celebrating ‘Friendship’

March 2020

I couldn’t let this year pass without celebrating - every year I capture portraits of women which then become an exhibition with the idea of inspiring younger generations.

This year the arts project in Croydon is taking a break + I thought it would be great to do something a little more casual with the end results being shared online during the day of International Women’s Day. I set about thinking of friends who work in central London so I could be in one spot and it wouldn’t be too tricky for them to come to me with the theme ‘friendship’ + ask them for their own interpretation, feeling, word, colour - whatever it was that resonates with them.

• so Friday 6th these gorgeous ladies below swung by for chatter, tea, pictures + let me take their photo.

I also had in my mind that I’m trying something new….challenging myself + stepping out of my comfort zone to shoot in a different way, to step back slightly, to allow the images to sit together, to continue for the month of March, to include portraits where the sitter isn’t smiling - I CANNOT even BEGIN to tell you HOW HARD that was!!! + produce a lovely project + as it turned out, was a very poignant theme.

Above a screen shot of my final selection of images, Below the final cut (or so I thought!)

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I loved how everyone’s response was very different.

I wanted to bring people together with this project, to share their individual interpretation of “friendship” + to create portraits where I challenged myself in the image making. I am really good at getting right up close to people and in to their space to capture their essence + to be honest this has turned in to a process of challenging normality for me, for sitting on my own hands when I wanted to move in closer or select the happiest photo in the selection + publish on socials only my finely curated selection of happy.

What transpired was me forcing myself to choose images I loved but were perhaps a little more sullen than my usual work. Not soley to challenge myself but to look at the images with a different perspective, a different vantage point. That in itself challenged me to let go and reconnect to being happy with the images myself, whichever ones I chose + trusting the ‘process’.

It’s also been about a conversation Tanya and I had about the viewers experience and ‘seeing’ as the artist or photographer was at the precise moment in time and layering on top of that what we bring in the form of our own interpretation/feelings/emotions/life events to any art at any given moment.

My normal way of working is interacting, observing, creating ease between me, my camera and my sitter, recording just the right representation that I see in any given moment that I feel is an accurate representation of them - on Friday, I stepped back, I deliberately created space to see if it impacted the images I created, if it brought something else forward. So a project based on friendship and exploring how we see.

It’s interesting that looking through the selected images of each of my friends , the versatility of their emotions and our conversation serves as a great mixture to capture slightly different feelings in each picture + the selections below are to appease my controlling mind and show the fun we had!! :-) They also work really nicely as a set of images.

I’m continuing this project and excited to capture more friends through March - over on instagram you can also hear everyone’s interpretation of ‘friendship’ . Have a fab March + enjoy x