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.
Northumbrian Light
The forecast was good and so the shoot was on.
I arrived at the Abbey at first glimmer
I was hoping to capture something magical: the movement of light through a building in a single day.
But this wasn't any old light, this was Northumbrian light.
And this wasn't any old town, this was Hexham with its ancient ochre walls that refract and absorb a particular quality of light.
Inside the Abbey, the Northumbrian light, having sifted through Hexham stone, is refined once more through the finest stained glass.
Ghostly cusping enlivens the arcading...
... and strange, organic worlds emerge from the darkness.
Shadows work towards beauty's end...
...and the raking light invigorates the mason’s marks..
As the day draws to a close
And then I saw it happen: the literacy of light on the Saxon Acca's Cross - the saint rumoured to have saved the town from raiding hordes by blotting out the light with conjured mists.
A day in the Light of Hexham Abbey
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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