i read another john taylor book on the plane recently – the christlike god. you may remember me blogging about the primal vision and the go-between god…

one of the things that took me by surprise was when he writes about luminosity.

we should perhaps be ready to trust our occasional perceptions of the luminosity of the physical world and its apparent potentiality for becoming a voice and a word whereby we know ourselves to be addressed and held in relationship.

he says that the greek word for god ‘theos’ might easily be translated as ‘shining’ in some of its other greek usage. i like this idea. maybe energy or wonder might be other ways of getting at the same idea.

i recently had a conversation with someone about my photos and they said that my work had a luminosity, an almost god-like presence. this wasn’t someone who is a christian as far as i know. but i was pleased and surprised with the comment and on reflction i am attracted to that sort of luminosity. i sometimes think of myself questing the light. i guess in this or this or this ?

i had a piece published in the latest issue of the london independent phortography magazine along with this photo which i submitted with this and this and this in the last issue which i was pleased about. i don’t think i have posted it on the blog (at least i can’t remember and can’t find it). this is it…

A Mystical Quest

“Sometimes I think the people to saddest for are those who have lost or become numb to the sensation of wonder” Douglas Coupland in Life After God

In the film American Beauty Ricky films a carrier bag floating on the wind in front of a garage door for 15 minutes. As it does so he whispers ‘there is so much beauty in the world – I can’t take it in’. He films everything. For him the camera seems to enable him to look or see more closely, to pay attention, to see beauty where others might see rubbish. The mystics call this awareness. In this sense photography is mystical. At the recent annual LIP lecture Paul Hill described photography as learning how to see. He also shared his own sense of never waning interest and excitement in taking ‘small adventures’ locally with the camera on a kind of quest.

These photographs are taken in Gunnersbury Park in Ealing, which is round the corner from where I live, on one of my own small adventures. The combination of morning sunlight, frost and mist is almost electric. It has an incredible energy to it. I find myself on a morning like this questing the light, wanting to catch moments that will never be repeated before they pass. Paradoxically these sort of moments are both wild and still. There’s a wild rush of adrenaline and excitement but then in the moment of beauty I almost hold my breath, lost in wonder at the stillness. Maybe it’s being in the fast paced city of London that makes these fleeting still moments so renewing.