Adventures in Mundane Pleasure

Stop and look around you.
Look out from the frameless window
Of a long pause.
Let the images come to you
Rather than chasing outward after them.
Allow yourself to reorient so that
You're no longer pulled along
By the stream of events.
If you want to see differently,
You'll have to look differently.
- Journeys on Mind Mountain

In our minds we create and allocate boxes for how we are, and, after a while, we make them real. For most of my life I considered myself someone who fell outside the sphere of creative expression. I was always the academic one, my brother the artist. I never contested this as it seemed quite true.

However around 9 years ago, I felt this overwhelming urge to at least try and create. Something had been brewing inside for quite a while, and eventually I couldn't ignore it. I went out and bought the most basic all manual cheapo SLR from Jessops I could find. Within moments, everything shifted - I literally fell in love.

It was like shining a light on a part of me I didn't know existed, even as I shot roll after roll of utter pap. I just loved doing it, walking around and seeing the world with fresh eyes, innocent eyes. I saw things I had never noticed, even after years of passing. The lines of the world, shifting tones and the constant beauty of the world around us - not just the separate domains of man made or natural, but their interaction,combination and flow.

I shot like this for a couple of years until the ugly monster of purpose reared its head and I just gave up. I wasn't good enough, I didn't have any idea what was good and worthwhile. I couldn't find a reason to continue. So I drifted away, not consciously but I left it.

(cont right)
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Four years later in mid 2007 after I had moved to Istanbul, on a whim I picked up a D40. I had been using a digital compact but the DSLR was a whole different beast. For a while we just didn't get along, I struggled with that camera for months and even though I enjoyed it, I wasn't sure I could get anything good out of it.

I was travelling alot at the time and would fight it constantly. Slowly things starting coming together, digital has its own texture and I needed to plug into that. Slowly it started to come together and beyond that I found some form of expression that didn't require words. I've taken it from there .....

I'm still a bit shy on all this - I don't fit in with the idea of being an artist. I don't see myself as artistic in any conventional sense - I cannot create very much, just reflect. It is sometimes the same old worries. For the most part I leave worries on what, where and why aside. There is no purpose to all this, especially in a world pumping out millions upon millions of images per day. All I know is that for all the struggles and doubts, when I pick up the camera I still feel and see the world with innocent eyes. There is a completeness in the act, a purity and quite honestly that is enough.

My natural inclination is to not share these photos and the words that go with it. My nature is so, and my mind tells me that sharing is some means of 'praise seeking', but I can tell my mind that not sharing for that reason is just 'not praise seeking' . It is the same.

So I share it, because it is there to be shared.

peace and enjoy,

can

feb2010