I complained a while back that I needed a project but I couldn’t find a good theme. A project gives direction and meaning to your photography and I had the feeling that I was flapping about without a clear goal.
The project
Recently, it hit me: At the end of this week I’ll be 52. I’m half the age of my grandmother. If I live as long as she has so far (she’s still going), I’m half way through my life. Then I realised that 52 is also the number of weeks in a year. So why not start a project over 52 weeks to create a record for these 52 years?
The point isn’t to record decay or getting old. It’s been done to death. It also would make a depressing project to look at. What interests me is to create a record of what my life is and how it got there. It’s more a matter of recording the consequences of being 52 than complaining about the fact that things aren’t as good as they used to be.
But I wanted something more tangible and more well defined rules. One thing I decided was to create 3 books by the end of the year, each with 52 photos taken along the year.
Book I: Body
The body as instrument, not as evidence of decay. What doing what I do does to my body and how my body adapts to what it does. Shot unstyled, without flattery, without mercy. I’m not here to make things look good, but not here either to increase effect. Think John Coplans, but concentrating on evidence, not loss.
Book II: Objects
The material residue of time. Small proofs of a life accumulating and changing hands. What things did I collect over time, what things are important to me, what things do I use all the time?
Book III: Locations
The widest scope: the spaces inhabited daily. Not the places where I might go on holiday or to an exhibition. The same specific corners the body and objects were shot near, closing the loop between self and world. Maybe think Arno Rafael Minkkinen.
Gear
I also wanted consistency and guidance for the tool I use. So I decided to use my Sony RX100 III with the lens fixed at 28 mm equivalent. 28 mm is the focal length I’m the most comfortable with in general. I know it doesn’t really work for portraits and people, but that’s not the point of the project. I’m not planning to take a lot of selfies.
If the camera fails (it’s about 12 years old), then I’ll have to make a decision: get another one, abandon the project, or something else.
Process
I thought for a while about whether I wanted to make it a public process. At first, I decided it would be purely personal on the way, then partially public at the end. That would allow me to do what I want on my own terms and organise things to get to the object I had envisioned before anyone saw anything.
But then I thought this wasn’t consistent with documenting your life as a fully honest and transparent process: if I have time and do as Winogrand did and let things settle for a while before sorting through shoots and showing them, it means that the person editing isn’t the person that took the photos. For him that was the point, but for me it defeats the purpose of complete honesty.
So, I considered doing it in real time. The other advantage of doing it as I go along is that it forces me to adhere to the remit: if I don’t show the photos I took, I haven’t taken photos and I failed. You’ll have to keep me on track.
I’m planning to publish this newsletter section on Wednesdays, between Lens of Time on Monday and I May Be Wrong on Friday. I think you can unsubscribe from this newsletter section if you’re not interested as Substack allows per section subscriptions.
#Photography #Personal #MidLife #Project