You can slice and dice photography projects in various ways - a temporal series, geographical coverage, or a taxonomic approach to a group. Some people find projects inspiring, forcing them to shoot more and think deeper. My experience has been that a large scale project - beyond something which could be completed in say a week - tends to become a millstone around my neck. And yet, every year I find myself drawn back to the idea of a new project. My Twelve Trees project was the most rewarding thing I have done photographically, but I didn’t manage to finish OneRiver and I can’t bring myself to go back to it now because it has been tarnished by some of the events which occurred while I was trying to complete it. Nevertheless, towards the end of the year I inevitably found myself drawn back to the idea of a project once more. OneRiver taught me a lot about completing a project, much of it to do with logistics, and I fed that into my thinking about a new project: The Brook.
In thinking about this, I asked myself the question, WWHD - What Would Hockney Do? I’m no Hockney, but I have learned a few things from him, as well as from failing with OneRiver. This is a photographic project but it will not be determined by technology. I am a “Photographer” committing to a photography project shot on a phone camera (WWHD?). My plan is that The Brook will be constructed from a monthly series of phone camera images taken from a fixed viewpoint at a local location - not coincidentally, a significant location, one which I have walked though nearly every day for thirty years. I will display and discuss these as they are taken, but the project output will actually be a single composite image (with a nod to Pep Ventosa) encompassing them all.
It's all about logistics, so this time around - test shots before committing! A grey and sullen dawn to 2019 means that you're getting the test shot this month rather than a sparkling start to the new year, but I think we're on. It begins.
More: The Brook
