A few years ago, finding ourselves with no plans for New Year’s Eve, we sat in our back garden with a playlist of 90s Australian alternative music, drinking cider and talking and heading to bed before the year ticked over. We’ve made a tradition of it now. Maybe we’re older, and late nights, loud parties and crowded places don’t appeal to us quite so much, although to be honest, I don’t think that was ever our thing. Maybe we’re just getting more comfortable with what suits us, even when it goes against the grain.
There’s a common sentiment that the week between Christmas and the New Year is an odd time where no one knows what day it is or what to do with themselves. Summer is our longest break of the year, combined with the festive season, something that feels quite strange in itself, as we still embrace many of the winter-based Christmas traditions, and I often find the whole thing feels like stepping into another reality. As kids, the summer holidays ran from mid-December to the end of January before the new school year started, allowing plenty of time for summer activities. As adults, we return to life much sooner, and it feels strange to be moving into the year while there are still bright skies and hot days.
Our house only has proper cooling in one room, so when the heatwaves come, we camp out in the bedroom, watching movies on a laptop and eating dinner from bowls on our laps.
Summer is also my least favourite season for photography. Everything feels too harsh. In the past, I would simply not shoot, but often now I find the creative voice has a need to make something. With the weather being less than forgiving, I turn to working indoors, which, for me, means a makeshift studio, still life, and self-portraits.
The camera has a particular way of showing more than what is actually there. This is acutely true of self-portraits. It’s a phenomenon that’s hard to explain, though any photographer who regularly turns the camera on themselves will tell you the same. It’s a form of expression that allows the mind to speak through the body, letting things come to the surface that sit below conscious awareness. I rarely go into these sessions with a plan, just the feeling that something needs to be explored. Sometimes I will use a simple prop, a chair, or a bunch of flowers to get started, but these often get discarded once something more instinctive takes over.
I struggled with a traditional idea of beauty for quite a while when I first started taking self-portraits, back when the only reason I did it was for the lack of any other model for the conceptual images I wanted to create. It was only after I saw the potential for them to be something deeper and more expressive that I started to be able to see beyond the need for a photo that was simply aesthetically pleasing and started looking at what else I could find.
With the transition into the new year, returning to work and other responsibilities, the reemergence of a difficult situation I thought had been resolved, and the wild, barefoot heat of summer, a lot was sitting below the surface waiting to be revealed.
When I look at these images, there are some things I expected to see and some that have surprised me—sadness and softness, but also strength. It’s discovery and catharsis all in one. It’s uncomfortable, as any deep introspection can be, but it can also be very freeing. If a session is honest, I feel a sense of release from the process (and when it is frustrating, it’s often because I’m either trying to capture an idea that isn’t mine or letting my doubt speak too loudly).
I’ve included a still life shot earlier in the week here too. None of these were intended to sit together, but coming from the same space and approach, they feel like they belong. In every photograph lies an element of the photographer, and in that way all images become self-portraits of a sort, a reflection of time and place and feeling. Roses are in bloom everywhere at the moment so they feel like a part of the season, and this image may be nothing deeper than a sense of summer nostalgia. Noticing is everything, and photography allows us to see and remember the moments we might otherwise overlook.
It is the last day of January as I write this, another marker in this strange time warp of the year. Everything feels like a beginning until you look closer and summer is half gone, everything alive and glowing, yet already starting to slip away. January is traditionally a clean slate, a place to make plans and move forward from, but that puts the focus on the future and not the present. Maybe, instead, the answer is just to spend a little more time noticing what is here right now.