breaking through
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it never falls the same way twice...  in the house of light I have found a way to overlay images. A whole new door has opened to the mysterious. Now the mundane can meet the mundane and release something ineffable. Using risk, using intuition, listening to your own breathing and body sensations as you compose.  red abstract 'there's always something more to be explored'... goes a line from the show I have just been performing. it's true folks a young man I met the other day said: i love poetry but what can I write - I'm 20 and haven't lived I said: write about that, about how you are unworthy to write that's my practice - any problem is a writing cue wait, this is the photography site, yes I know, but the same learning can be transferred across - you'll never learn to trust your instincts if you don't follow them...and I mean over time and also if you never take a risk this shot was almost not taken - too banal - but it compelled me so here it is  Intuition is muscle - use it, and you can develop trust with it. Start with some low stakes...just stop, get the camera out and snap. No harm done, there's always 'delete'. At a certain point Diane Arbus told herself to not photograph what she had done before. I think about the wisdom of widening horizons and being open to the new, but it's good to keep the familiar pathways open too. Walking home yesterday I saw a bit of hardboard in the back of the van, scumbled over with white and ruled across by the lines of the back windscreen heaters. Minimal like Agnes Martin. I took a shot of a white -washed window a month or two ago - handmade cumulonimbus - you can see it in the timeline of my instagram page. It's also used in my coming youtube film - very exciting. And I had taken a scumbled window in Enniskillen two years ago - a mad abstract where the clouding was dotted with large orange circles. So I looked at this van and as I often have done, felt tempted to pass it by - 'tick, done that'. But I followed my rule. My outer eye had seen the drips, the stripes the mottled whiteness. My inner eye had seen the Gothic castle scape created by the reflections. My inner eye and my friend and witness, the camera.  Gormenghast I said that the stakes of taking a photograph are low - but the stakes of not taking the photograph...
you stand to lose much more than your time. so here is this past week's day by day images celebrating the little and not so little hidden (or not so hidden) corners of Crouch End - guess, then click! In the previous post below there are now captions, too - mystery revealed! The Crouch End festival starts on 5th June. Day by day, you can find the 'advent calendar' posted on various Facebook sites where people have been fun guessing. Last week I gave the titles... this week, let the mystery remain a little longer...  #5 Banners The way the light falls makes a huge difference. Something you pass many times suddenly offers something special.
That's the moment to snap. Don't rush by thinking I can get that image next time. It may never look the same again. Have you seen this? The mural outside Banners restaurant.  #4 Queens Pub Although you are shooting something beautiful, where are you going to hold your camera?
I find that I allow my body to choose and so often it is right. I don't know what that is about. I often seem to be not to be framing with my eye, but with my hands. There's a mystery in detail - when something catches your eye ask what is the most interesting, the most compelling detail of that?  #3 post office door |
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Performer and theatremaker Peta Lily has been taking photographs for the last five years. Her aesthetic has been to use her iPhone camera to capture the world close up and with an immediacy that is both surprising and moving. Categories
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