“My work is an exploration and documentation of a complex mix of feelings that stemmed from my Mother's death in 2020. The projects I set out on always have an unseen focus on the grief and memories of my Mum, whether that be the gentle gaze of a female friend, that mutual understanding between myself and my sitter or the ongoing documentation of my family members, both new and old.
Using a 10x8 camera to make my work seems like the only option. It forcefully slows me down and allows me to revisit the same place or person multiple times; as well as allows me to use the darkroom to further me time spent with each image and provide a deeper understanding of what the photograph really means to me.
For me, a huge part of picture-making with people is the respect that occurs when the camera is introduced into a scene. The most important part of making a photograph is the conversations that occur and that the subject is most comfortable. I think this takes both skill with the camera and also a deeper understanding of the sitter; this is why I tend to make a lot of portraits of people who mean something or represent something to me. I see a lot of my Mother in the pictures of young girls and the camera is a tool that enables me to explore this further as well as being a coping mechanism for grief.
All of my work links in with each other and I could spend hours talking about each individual picture but my landscape work sits differently from my portrait work. My work documenting different landscapes that surround me is a process of being alone when making a picture, spending my days on long walks through ancient woodland or quiet scenes of tranquillity, they enabled me to cope with the initial pain of losing my Mum and have developed into a complex series that has begun to intertwine with me pictures of people.”
That’s it for this newsletter!
If you have any suggestions for interviews, features, topics, interesting work or photo books that I should check out, don’t hesitate to leave a comment or reach out!
Stay safe and keep shooting.
Kim
Follow Nowhere Diary on Instagram and recommend it to your friends!
Sincere, warm and touching. Your work is so full of emotion. Your mum would be so very proud. 💕
Lovely work Josh 💗💗