One hour self-portrait with London Plane tree, Orleans House Gallery grounds, July 2024
My Body The Time Machine
2024 - ongoing
A series of slow self-portraits taken with a pinhole camera, responding to the experience of being in time and nature.
It was almost impossible, in the buzzing stillness of the meadow, beneath the big sky, to remain a single and separate Self, a little, blind, independent life that didn't want to fit in with a greater Being.
- Marlen Haushofer ’The Wall’ 1963
I’m using a pinhole camera to photograph time. Snatches of fleeting light on leaves, slow self portraits. Sometimes the exposures can be up to an hour, or maybe two, depending on the light, and so each photo is a durational piece, almost a performance. I have rules, I can not distract myself to pass the time, so no listening to music or looking at my phone, I just have to be still and look at trees. My feet start to hurt immediately, I instantly regret the position I’ve chosen, or the location, or even the whole idea, but the camera shutter is open and I have to commit. And time passes strangely, slows down and speeds up, and it’s just a case of waiting, and then waiting a bit more. I listen to the birds, I watch how the light changes. My mind wanders - I think about exposure times and calculations and adjustments to my plan, sometimes I catch myself mentally counting the seconds - and I have to bring myself back to just waiting and not knowing. The longer I stand the easier it becomes, and then I feel like I could continue for another hour. And even so, despite my stillness, in the photo I’m a blur, a vibration. Every one of those thoughts and micro-movements and light changes and all the minutes are captured on the paper. But the best moments are when sometimes, beautifully, suddenly, my mind empties. No thoughts, just silence. Relief. I feel my Self floating off, I become grass and root and soil and air and blessed nothingness. I can’t force this. I just have to hope. It’s an attempt to capture an experience of stillness by compressing time into a single still frame, and to fully experience that passing of time. The time it takes for the light to enter a tiny pin-pricked hole and bounce around inside a dark box, for that light and time to sharpen some things and soften others, the time it takes to merge into the background, to become nettles and bindweed and motes of dust and falling leaves. It’s an act of being in the moment and disappearing into it.