
Genius Loci Digest: 15 August 2025
Here in Paris, with his work all around me, I feel the cataracts of modern life thinning...
This digest revels in the in-between, the transitional, the presence of absence. My camera with its dials and knobs and sharp focus has taken me into the blur of things. It has taught me that because things can't be measured it doesn't mean that it isn't there. The spirit of things, the essence of our places is as real as my shutter button.
Here in Paris, with his work all around me, I feel the cataracts of modern life thinning...
Even when I’m heading back home I can feel its zest, its warmth and light. I take the memory of it with me inside, like contraband.
Part of the joy I feel as I sit with a vin rouge, watching life ripple through the square, is a deeper sense of connection and gratitude
That moment got my cognitive juices flowing. I began to wonder: if a single face could hold such depth, what might happen if I tried to capture it line by line in my sketchbook?
Looking after the building and its context speaks to something profoundly human – the impulse to invest ourselves in things that extend beyond our own lifespans.
What we all realised today is that our high streets are not just places to shop – the buildings that line them are repositories of memory. They tell stories about the people of the past: what we loved, how we coped, how we engaged with the world.
I’m completely jolted out of my torpor by a face staring directly at me from behind a phalanx of golden leaves
Whilst I stood and waited for its return, I envisioned notions of time loosening its grip - of fog as a veil not just over landscape, but over centuries.
I feel a jolt, a sudden shift of perspective. The tension between the refined above and the stark reality beneath is palpable. Hidden in plain sight is a narrative on our own mortality – a memento mori.
✨ Wondering why I ask for support?
An Anxiety of Memberships