Yearly reflections
I always love this time of year, winter has well and truly taken hold and on the most part, people have either stopped, or I have managed to drown out the exclamations about the cold weather. January may be dreary to some, but to me it’s fresh, new. People become a little vulnerable this time of year, open up freely about their desires for life hence-forth and their sentimental attachments to the year elapsed.
Summer Solstice, 04:33AM - 21/06/24 , Hackney Marshes
I always love this time of year, winter has well and truly taken hold and on the most part, people have either stopped, or I have managed to drown out the exclamations about the cold weather. January may be dreary to some, but to me it’s fresh, new. People become a little vulnerable this time of year, open up freely about their desires for life hence-forth and their sentimental attachments to the year elapsed.
When I look at the past year, I find it hard to fathom that I fitted everything that I did, into one year.
The year began with me being violently ill in Hampi in central India, back to London and straight back to university to continue my degree in Photojournalism. In the months that followed, I moved house 4 times, with a brief stint on a houseboat. I spent 3 weeks in the Isle of Man, nurturing family connections and photographing the Isle of Man TT races.
Fast forward to July I spent 6 weeks in Ukraine documenting the incredible work being carried out by a group of Humanitarian deminers in the east of the country. Back to London and once again back to university. Then the year ended with a leisurely trip to Morrocco.
Travel is incredibly important to me; I’ve never been the sort of person that will be satisfied by staying in one place. Being from a small Island, I grew up with this fascination about what lay outside of the confides of what felt like at the time, my prison.
When I was a child, I owned an Atlas. I would spend long hours leafing through the pages and touching all the names of all the wonderful places and traveling to them in mind, in my child-like wondery fantasy.
It was much more than just an Atlas to me, it was a mountain top, an anti-venom for ‘Island-Syndrome’, a selection of differing windows, portals or a rain cloud of desires begging to be burst open.
It brought me enormous comfort to learn the world was bigger than me, and at the same time fear. Although the sense of fear only added to my enjoyment of the Atlas. The fear was pure at that age, fuelled only by the unknown, not fuelled by stereotypes or the globalised hate we buy and sell as adults.
So here’s to another prospective year of new places and a brief selection of photographsand a little ditty to commemorate the former.
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No order
No context
No motive
No malice
No crying over spilt milk
No holds barred
Nothing to declare
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