Motivation.
It has been quite some time since I posted. Nine long months in fact. A combination of many personal things eating away at my time and preventing me from gathering my thoughts for a post. But finally, sitting here listening to drills, footsteps up and down the stairs, together with crashing and banging, I find myself with some time on my hands, if not tranquility. (I have workmen in the house).
Currently, I’m unable to get into my small studio space. Everything is covered in dust sheets and locked up.
I do find things frustrating just now - little chance for any meaningful photography, no scanning, not much editing either, apart from iPhone pics on my iPad post processed using Snapseed. Regular visits to Bluesky help, where the photo and film community continue to inspire during this enforced lull. Also reading one or two brilliant bloggers who have kept me both entertained and interested.
A time to think.
But this lull in creative productivity does give me some time to think and I’ve been doing a great deal of that lately. In many ways this unavoidable break has been a good thing. Reflecting on the loss of two very dear friends last year has made me pause a little and try to think more carefully about what I want to achieve with whatever time I have left. This is not morbid, just realistic.
Over the last few months I have played around with many of my cameras from my trusty Canon AE-1 and Olympus MJU-1 film cameras to my digital Canon R100 and even my wonderful old Fuji x20. But time has always been too tight for a longer project.
One event I simply had to make the time for was an Open Call from Liverpool’s Open Eye Gallery and John Moores University. A call for photographers both professional and amateur to submit images for an exhibition on the theme of ‘Absence’. My daughter saw the details online and sent me the link and I’m so glad she did.
Absence, curated by sociologists Laura Harris and Maike Pötschulat, was a new group exhibition that brought together the photography of seven visual sociologists, alongside finalists from an open call for photography of absences in the Liverpool City Region.
Maike Pötschulat, one of the exhibition’s curators, said of the exhibition :
‘Absence is not emptiness. Often, what appears to be absent can have a large footprint in our lives and societies while generating a whole host of activities. In this exhibition, we wanted to focus on the ways in which absence is lived, felt and practised to show what materialises in the gaps and voids that are left by an absence.’
I was deeply inspired by these words and immediately set about attempting to answer the theme of ‘Absence’. I submitted three photographs made using my Canon AE-1, Canon 28mm lens and yellow Hoya filter. I loaded Ilford HP5 as it was what I had in stock at the time.
Why film?
I chose to work with film out of a personal conviction that this medium has a permanence that digital lacks and this method also slows down the process of making a photograph, helping me to think more clearly while increasing my sensory awareness of the surrounding environment. In short, it enhances my ‘memory’ and prevents ‘offloading’, but much more on this next time.
Documenting what is no longer there.
I wanted to capture what was ‘no longer there’ in the neighbourhood where I grew up, where the memories I have evoke deep feelings of my time living there in the 1950s and 60s; Edge Hill, Low Hill and Kensington Fields, all in the Liverpool 7 area. These areas have changed and much has gone but some things remained constant.
"What does it mean to document what is no longer there, or those who are no longer present.”
Dr Maike Pötschulat
Inspired by this sentence I attempted to capture ‘what is no longer there’.
Making the photograph: My School.
After walking up Brownlow Hill from leaving the train at Lime Street station I passed the now ‘absent’ old Royal Hospital and made my way up the steep hill to the Low Hill area passing once again an ‘absent’ building, Low Hill Post Office. I made my way along the length of Hall Lane until I reached Battenberg Street. I stopped and looked around the vacant grassed over area where my primary school once stood. The sun was shining. The light was good if a little harsh for 400 ISO. I made several photographs from different locations, walking around the empty space and remembering the fine old building that used to stand there.
When I looked at the now empty site where the Alfred Waterhouse designed Rathbone Primary School once proudly stood, I pictured the red brick, sandstone and Liverbird carvings that made it such a familiar part of the Kensington community. I went to school there in the 1950s and remember the warmth of the teachers and the feeling that the school belonged to all of us. Since its demolition in 2000, nothing has replaced it. For me, my photograph is not only about the loss of a building, but about the ‘absence’ of a place that shaped my childhood and held the community together.
This photograph was selected, alongside many other truly fine images, to be displayed on the wall screen as a part of the exhibition.
https://openeye.org.uk/whatson/absence/
Next time: more on ‘Absence’ and ‘memory’, ‘offloading’ and how this whole experience has triggered a new project and direction for me.
Thank you for reading.