I've been gone this past year. I've had things to do. Fortunately until recently the Inside the Outside Collective and Tim Andrews kept things ticking over with exhibitions of my photos in London and Brighton, but at home in Leicester I lost weight and stopped going out. I found out some pretty bad things about my new spread-way-too-thin self and actually some good things too. I now have sole care of two other human beings and so I cope.
This has meant that I've not been able to dwell on taking photos. I remember at the early stages one person saying that I would have to give up such 'frivolities'. I already had in effect, but I was angry. This was something that meant so much to me. Why should I be a drudge, a cook, a mother*, a worker, a cleaner and nothing else? In reality as I sit here listening to the washer, with food that needs to be put away in the kitchen and hair that needed dying a month ago it's really not viable, but there's not one day that has passed that I don't remember that there was something more.
So, time to step into the way back machine. Back when I still had an almost reckless sense of adventure that I'm hoping will still be there when I regain some freedom both physically and mentally. During my first solo holiday with kids, I had to be coaxed up Snowdon by my eldest child, but I'm getting stronger.
This is Denmark, from July 2016. I've already posted some film shots of this trip, but this is what I found and chose to record digitally. Thanks to John Blakemore and Joseph Wright for a hand with the sequencing, whilst on a Bookmaking course at the Photo Parlour in Nottingham, though admittedly the raw materials were seriously lacking. I watched the other photographers sets coalesce into something meaningful, but mine just wouldn't. So, let's get rid and move on at last!
* I could actually argue that being a mother is pretty fucking important, but it's still not really seen that way, is it?