The Years in Photos
Totally integrating twenty years of photography. Plus, my new project.
It is impossible to state how much digital cameras liberated photography. That which was previously expensive, onerous, and hard to share suddenly became abundant and easy. Maybe too easy.
Before the digital era, my photography was limited to a couple of rolls a year. The resulting pictures would typically be stored in shoe boxes rarely to be seen again. Digital changed everything. I experimented, documented, and learned to see. I was obsessed with what I could capture and the possibilities of sharing things on the internet.
In 2004, I started posting a daily photo on LiveJournal. I liked the idea of having a deadline that forced me to leave the house and keep my eyes open. I was living in London but had given up my day job to start a magazine, The Mind’s Construction. It was a time of saying yes to life, of having too much time on my hands and producing lots of photos.
My photography impressed at least one person enough to pay me money to take pictures. The journalist Rhodri Marsden asked me to illustrate his column in the shortlived freesheet The London List and the other was for his band’s album A Place of Our Own.
However, my photographic thing was to take two photos of myself and then splice them together. In 2005, this expanded to doing the same for others. With Luke Haines, whose website I built, I took the opportunity to do a digital triple.
I also did a photoshoot with Lawrence Gullo, a young trans burlesque performer. Both experiences made me realise how much more I needed to learn about technique and lighting.
In 2005, I moved to Glasgow and stopped taking quite so many photos. I’m not sure why. The light? The fact that I was busy starting a new career as a full-time web designer? Either way, I took few good photos in those years. I became discouraged. Indeed, it is only since the pandemic that I have started thinking seriously about photography again.
2023 marks two decades since I bought my first digital camera. Having recently posted my year in photos, I thought it would be interesting to go through my folders and repost a selection of images from this period. Click the image to see more from each year.
P.S. This is my final post under the masthead of Total Integration. The new title will be revealed at the bottom of this post.
2003
Despite ethical qualms, I enjoyed documenting the mundane.
2004
During 2004 I ran a webzine and spent most nights going to gigs in London.
2005
I enjoyed experimenting with digital editing software to create composites.
2006
I’m still not sure why I took so few photographs in 2006.
2007
Is a year the right way of collating photographs? Maybe not. A better way could be by theme, by person, by style. These feel so disjointed together.
2008
When I review life, there is an uncanny sense of repetition. I can discern unconscious patterns. We all have a nature.
2009
The symbolic charge of a photograph is often intensely personal. We have to tell a story for it to resonate with others. So I understand those who seek the impersonal (as below) to avoid such feelings.
2010
Is there a point in time when you become distanced enough for a photograph to feel alien? It feels that way with this year.
2011
As Morrissey almost sang: “Some years are better than others.” I prefer taking photos when people are on voluntarily display than when they are having a private moment. A public fair is a good example of that.
2012
Contrary to the Mayans, the world didn’t end.
2013
Most photos are travel photos. When else do you get the time and leisure? In 2013, I was fortunate enough to visit Japan, Hong Kong and Macau.
2014
This was a momentous year in Glasgow — Independence referendum, Commonwealth Games — but a photowalk and a trip to North America were seemingly more interesting to me.
2015
This year was a turning point for me. However, it is difficult to discern a narrative in life, as this collection proves.
2016
For an urbanite, the impact of seeing the wildness of nature is doubly impressive. I don’t know if I have the patience to do nature photography, but it was a joy to capture the essence of this vicious little mink.
2017
When I spoke with Simon Murphy he talked of all the years he wasted not taking photos. It’s amazing how little I have from many of these years compared with the bursting folders of today. In my case, I blame the fact that I had a terrible phone camera.
2018
When looking back, it’s nice to see a series of photos evolving. But how many do you need for a series? Four.
2019
We take photos to remember, but how much can ever be documented? Life is forged in forgetfulness.
2020
During the pandemic, I started a photo blog to make my government-issued daily walk more interesting.
2021
The daily photo blog continued in 2021 and helped provide early content for this newsletter.
2022
I enjoy playing pool and found a random pub in Arbroath that had a table. We chatted to these locals and ended the encounter by asking them if I could take a photo. Whatever the merit of the image, I love the ability of the camera to crystallise a moment, a personality, a life.
2023
Here we are in 2023, all caught up.
The Crop
The curse of the autodidact is to not know what we don’t know. When you study at an institution there will be teachers who have a sense of the entire field and can nudge you in the right direction. The autodidact has to make do with books and instinct. They rarely have the time to pursue research in any systematic way. It’s not all bad though. The autodidact’s unruly obsessions can lead them to discoveries, free of the dogma of the academy.
Over the last couple of years of writing this newsletter the only imperative I’ve followed is to write about whatever I found interesting that week. In 2024, the newsletter will go deeper into the history of photography.
It is called The Crop, which could refer to the cream of the crop, to the cropping of a photo, or as the acronym for The Critical Review of Photography. As a bonus, I am adding a section called The WIP, which liberates my weekly photojournal, The Week in Photos, from the constraints of Instagram. All being well, both will be posted on Saturday mornings.
Shared with my friend in the Highlands …. she is an enthusiastic and successful photographer also.