For a long time I wanted to be the photographic equivalent of literary travellers like Bruce Chatwin, Eric Newby, Jonathan Raban or (minus the huge green ticks on my gonads) Redmond O'Hanlon.
These days I tend to draw inspiration from literary style rather than subject. A relatively recent discovery was W. S. Sebald, particularly "The Rings of Saturn". I love the way he uses slow accumulation of detail to form a whole, his inclusive and unsentimental tastes, and the combination of a contemplative pace with acute observation.
Another writer who has meant a lot to my photography is the botanist Oliver Rackham. He inspired me to try and learn how to read the structure of the landscape and how it relates to history, and that of the people who lived there. I have reached that age when the sight of a hawthorn growing on an iron age embankment is somehow tremendously reassuring. A patch of bluebells in an open field induces a sense of loss. A redwood surrounded by upstart ashes and alders is a sign of hope.
I have also recently been reading a lot of classic physics. Original research papers by Maxwell, Rayleigh, and Helmholtz, as well as my well-thumbed copies of the Feynman Lectures on Physics. I don't expect many APUGers to rush to their library and join me, but there are strong arguments there for an informed botanising: for traversing the world with my eyes open and my intellect engaged. For not allowing other people to set the agenda of my interests. |