One July day in 2018, two small boys and their photographer mother passed the balcony where I sat writing.  They were click-clicking away on what, on investigation, turned out to be their Instax mini cameras.  There was a whirring sound and they were waving something at me, tiny white papers which, transformed over time into a somewhat wonky picture of a building roof and some sky, and a lopsided version of myself leaning against the balcony looking down. 

I was enchanted.

And stirred.  Faint memories of my childhood developed before my inner eyes, of a polaroid camera belonging to a friend, an object of total wonder, utterly inaccessible, totally captivating.  It had taken 30 years to develop into a dream.

And only a week longer to turn into reality.

In the Instax camera I found a medium perfectly suited to capturing and emphasising everyday beauty.  I instinctively set two rules:  No posing and no second shots. 

While I can be cajoled on occasion into bending these rules, I have come to understand how they nurture an aesthetic vision that treasures immediacy, intimacy, spontaneity, vulnerability and presence. 

This aesthetic questions a culture whose values show up in the highly polished and dehumanised postures clamouring for attention in the clickonomy. 

As with my other work, the experimental, beginner nature of my relationship to the medium for the exploration of lived experience is part of the given aesthetic.  What is most important to me is aliveness, intimacy, movement, story, humanity.  I have come to learn this through looking at my work.  I am not a photographer, with the skills and technique that this implies.  I do not stage the shots and give directions to the people.  I do not ask them to come back to the same place another day when the light is better.  I do not try to frame it with this.  I whip the camera out quickly, while no one has become self conscious, and allow the play and the joy of it to join the moment.

Through my photos, and through the exhibition ‘poiema’– the greek for ‘poems’ used in the verse ‘we are God’s poetry’ in the Bible – I reveal the beauty and artistry present in everyday life. 

Above selected photos from summer 2018 till now. Below photos from the two first albums: summer 2018