Each week I send out a short, fresh reflection from the road – photographs, sketches, and observations from old places that still have something to teach us. What follows is a moment from those travels.
"I have a belief, I guess, in the power of the aggregate human attempt – the best of ourselves. In love and hope and optimism – you know, the magic things that seem inexplicable."
The Presence of Absence.
Very early on in my career I came across a proverb from Lao Tzu which said that the value of a cup depends upon the void between - the part where nothing exists.
As my career developed as a photographer, I transferred the cup idea to buildings and places and spent many years trying to work out how to capture the in-between, the atmosphere, the genius loci of a place. For me, the intangible is the most important part of the building - it’s the part that impacts me the most. The best time to capture the intangible is during the golden hour, when the light reaches into spaces to enliven and delineate them.
It wasn’t long before I started to experiment with a bit of light wizardry during the golden hour. I inherited the idea from my dad, who was a plumber. As a kid, during the summer holidays, he would take me along to his work in the council houses of Manchester. He used a smoke bomb to check the airflow in the flues and on one particularly sunny day it made the invisible light visible. It was a magical moment in a mundane space in the urban sprawl of Manchester.
"It was a magical moment in a mundane space in the urban sprawl of Manchester."
Over time I have developed that technique and used it in my photography. It brings the child out in me, and takes me back to that day with Dad. I feel like a magician and, if I’m honest, the photography becomes secondary to the wonder of seeing the light gracefully materialise before my very eyes.
I used the technique recently at St. Peter and St. Paul, in Broadwell, Oxfordshire. My aim was to capture the light through the window of a side chapel. The next day, I wrote in my diary about my experience during the shoot:
“I’m standing in the chancel with my camera set up on a tripod in anticipation. The smoke is starting to settle. It’s remarkable how the air moves around the church in swags and swirls - each space has an atmosphere of its own particular volition. I stand and wait and watch and, as the air is captured within the beams of sunlight, I start to see faces forming and dissipating in the haze. I see a woman’s face with hair like the stormy brine and then a serpent breathing fire. Steve and Annabel are with me, but they’re chatting in the nave. I look back to them - should I tell them what I saw?
"I stand and wait and watch and, as the air is captured within the beams of sunlight, I start to see faces forming and dissipating in the haze."
As the haze settles, the beams strengthen, I click the shutter button and then take a deep breath. I’m left with a sense of awe. I know the faces aren’t real, I don’t believe in ghosts, and I suspect that it’s something to do with my pareidolia - seeing faces as a way of trying to comprehend the presence of absence. "
Much later when I’m processing the photographs through - I remember that I took a video of the scene. When I play it back - I see faces again, different faces and other shapes that seem to draw in the swags of the monument behind. I’m struck by the fact that, without the smoke, there’s so much going on around us that we can’t see or comprehend. From one perspective this building is stone and glass and wood and bone, but from another it is a thing of majesty and awe. It is full of life.
I’m reminded of some words by C.S Lewis in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader:
“In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas."
“Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”
Readers of the Genius Loci Digest
What stays with readers
That aura, those echoes - the muted light is transporting. What a space to feel rooted in history. I'd love to make that journey myself; you've stirred the opera lover and architectural dreamer in me.
From the heritage portfolio
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