Lockdown: A year at f/4

I’m often compelled to follow the trail of creative breadcrumbs that my subconscious lays out. Where will it lead? I’m not sure that even it knows, but it is always a path worth exploring

This time, it decided that I only needed one lens and one focal length; macro f/4. So I held onto the tiger’s tail and let it drag me through lockdown. It felt right. It was rewarding

Was my retreat into macro an attempt to shrink in on myself? The chosen path giving a softness to the world, knocking off the hard edges of the unfolding tragedy?

Or a way of perceptually expanding my world; railing against the restrictions imposed upon it?

This work was made within a single anonymous square metre, but for me it was the world writ large 

Now, with some time perspective from making the images, I see in them gesture, relationship and intimacy; perhaps reflecting that at that moment, those things were not an option for many 

The subjects are both there and not there. Some are fading memories. Some tell of loss

But importantly, some tell of tenderness. The brightness of the future. Of hope