[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 16 September 2021].
ca(p)tivated
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 17 September 2021].
So, the cat's out of the bag...
The new side hustle I somehow fell into is cat-sitting! :o
For anyone who's known me more than a few years, I've never previously been a cat person. I was always a dog person.
But, over the past I-don't-know-how-many-years, the idea of cats has stopped repulsing me. I've realised I'm an "animal person". Not just a dog person.
So, when friends asked if I'd be willing to cat-sit for them for almost three weeks - even though I'd never met their feline companions - my first questions were:
Will your home make a photogenic backdrop for self-portraits, and are you okay with me sharing your home on the internets?
Can I bring my iMac as I don't currently have a laptop?
Are you okay with me disappearing for four days as I already have time out of town booked during that period?
Will it cost me anything?
The answers to all those questions were more than satisfactory, so I ventured across to West London at the beginning of September to meet my potential gaolers.
Not only were the kittehs cute and friendly - I bonded immediately with Susie, who's apparently the most hesitant with strangers (not pictured; this is Shiloh). But I fell in love with the house.
The colour schemes and decor. The abundance of bookshelves and bookcases. The furnishings. The hidden doorways (literally, not figuratively). The decorations. EVERYTHING.
My only real struggle since relocating almost a week ago was getting in front of the camera again. Which is largely due to my weight (pun intended).
But I'm tackling that - mentally and emotionally - and from the one shoot I've done so far, I have a selection of photos that don't offend me. I'm hoping to do more tomorrow and at the beginning of next week. And to share more with you.
I just need to be gentle with myself.
I'm also dealing with some worrying family medical news from Australia. And some unexpected flat stuff. And, obviously, having to continue to pick up client work.
But the kittehs help.
They 'meow' and make Mogwai-like sounds at me when they're ready for breakfast (and they've realised that won't be at 5:00, so they're patient for when I'm actually awake).
They make me laugh at their tap-drinking antics even though I can't entertain those antics for long.
And I haven't killed any fish yet.
And I've had the pleasure of giving friends a grand tour of this lovely haven I'm in until the end of the month.
If anyone wants to remind me how squatters' rights work... ;)
Or, if you have a photogenic mansion/house/flat/caravan/van and a pet or pets you need looking after while you go on holiday, DM me.
I'm open to payment in photo ops, pet love and booze ;) (Money's also good).
Also, for you folk who thought I'd struggle with collaborating artistically with cats: Shiloh joined me on the couch of her own volition. Without any real coaxing and, definitely, no kitteh treats. The beeping of my self-timer was all she needed to focus her laser-sharp gaze for this portrait :)
prismatic
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 9 September 2021].
daysleeper
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 4 September 2021].
thinking of a dream i had
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 20 August 2021].
too much stress!
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 4 August 2021].
Much delayed, I've made my book, darkness & light - a collection of 109 of my 366 days self-portraits - available again on Blurb.
A friend of mine who missed buying it when it was first available asked me about it. I don't even know how long ago now. On the back of that, I've finally made it available for a while again.
How long it will be available is yet to be seen. But if you didn't snap up a copy (or didn't know about it) back in 2008, now is your chance to be one of a limited number of folk to have your sweaty palms on a copy.
Because it's print on demand, signed copies are complicated but not impossible, if you want that. Email me at propaganda@bronwenhyde.com if this takes your fancy, and we can work out the logistics.
This is an outtake from the project I edited tonight, almost 14 years later.
The final image for the project for this day was a diptych entitled peeping tom, inspired by the 1960 Michael Powell film of the same name. It was a brilliantly creepy film, so well made, and tapped into my love of photography and psychological thrillers/horrors.
untitled #5
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 29 July 2021].
i have an unhealthy relationship with my body
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 4 July 2021].
CW: eating disorders, body dysmorphia, body-shaming, fat-shaming
This piece also includes language some may find offensive.
I have an unhealthy relationship with my body.
It started just as I was becoming a woman. At least, as much as I recall, though maybe there were other signs before I can remember. I would be surprised if there weren't.
But the first instances that come to mind of my unhealthy relationship with my body were around 11 years old. Definitely by the time I finished primary school.
It started with a combination of examples set out for me, some from family, some from glossy magazines. You know, the way most of us learn and internalise these things from a young age. Not all are intentionally put there to harm us, but others are seemingly as old as time.
I first remember discussing healthy weight ranges with my Mum. I don't know how it came up. I don't even remember weighing myself much at that age. I had to go into my parents' ensuite to do so. I don't recall a scale in the main bathroom when my brothers and I were kids. At some point, maybe I asked my Mum how much I should weigh. Perhaps she looked it up to see what was healthy for my height and age.
I wasn't overweight; I was slim. I was active in the school playground. I played sports: netball, Newcomb ball and softball. And I was one of the few girls in my grade five and six classes who would go in to catch the ball when we played Kanga cricket. I usually tried out for various athletic events for interschool sports: the 100m, 400m and 800m races, relays and, hilariously, looking back, high jump. At the time, I was around the second or third tallest girl in my year, though I never grew any taller after I turned eleven.
But I remember my Mum taking a magazine out of the bottom drawer of her bedside cabinet to show me a graph. I was near the bottom of the healthy weight range for my height.
I never asked my Mum why she kept her Slimming magazines tucked away where she did. It was the kind of place someone might hide away pornographic magazines, not health magazines. So, to this day, I don't know if she kept them there because it was handy for her to read the articles.
Or if she was ashamed of buying them and reading them because she felt shamed by her weight issues.
Or if she kept them there to avoid setting an example of body-shaming to her daughter. Maybe she didn't want me to be obsessed with weight loss and body shapes and sizes and fixate on such things as an impressionable pre-teen.
If it was the latter, unfortunately, it didn't work.
I didn't become obsessive about weighing myself straight away. I still don't recall weighing myself every day at that point.
But I know I regularly went to her drawer to pull out that magazine to check where I fit on the graph whenever my weight wavered. I checked and re-checked it to reassure myself. Eventually, all I needed to remember was to stay as close to eight stone as possible. Then all would be okay.
My discovery of that graph would have coincided with a friend introducing me to Dolly magazine.
Though we were only about 11 and 12, her sister was a couple of years older and already deep in the world of glossy teen and fashion magazines.
I was still crushing on teen heartthrobs in the pages of Smash Hits, Bop and The Big Bopper and reading magazines that were supposedly more healthy for young women, like Girlfriend.
My friend introduced me to Dolly, Teen Vogue, I think, and other magazines handed down from her sister. Magazines to ease young girls into the constant mixed messages they would become accustomed to as they grew older. Glossy pages full of articles about loving yourself whilst simultaneously working out which parts (physical, emotional and mental) of yourself to hate this week/month/year and what the best ways of covering up those shortcomings were: makeup, creams, tablets, fashion.
Like most teenage girls, I internalised all of these expectations pretty quickly. And what the magazines taught me was rapidly reinforced in the halls of my high school.
In year eight, when a boy I fancied told me I had a "fat arse" as I walked up the stairs into the building in front of him, it played over and over in my mind. For most of the following three years, I wore oversize t-shirts over my jeans to cover my "fat arse". I don't know what I weighed then, but it was unlikely to be much over 55kg, but likely less.
At 16 or 17 years old - the earliest I would have been allowed to use a public gym - my younger brother and I signed up at a gym in the small town where we had moved.
By the time I was in year 12 and allowed to wear casual clothing to school every day, I realised I had a flat stomach. And my arse wasn't fat. So I finally gained the confidence to wear midriff tops and my jeans down on my hips.
For the three years I was at college, I spent almost as many hours per week dancing in nightclubs as in the classroom. I spent three to five hours a night, three to five nights a week, dancing to indie, alternative, retro and disco hits with friends.
When I finished college, I managed to get a much-reduced price on a gym membership. I got back into exercising regularly there as well as on the dancefloor.
By the time I was 18, I had internalised an image of how women should look. So much so that I didn't flinch when a guy I regularly went out dancing with would point at and ridicule other women around me for having "cunt-pots". All I thought at the time was how good it was that I didn't have one.
Another friend put up "pool rules" for his inflatable pool bought with his redundancy payment. The first rule was "No fat chicks", and the last rule was "Definitely no fat chicks". I still didn't flinch. I wasn't a "fat chick". Why should I?
When a guy I slept with bragged about how he'd never had a girl in his bed who weighed over 60kg, I was once again proud I didn't weigh over 60kg.
It was only later, when I got together with a woman I met through the last guy, that I thought about how fucked up his thinking was when she pointed out that she had been in his bed and she weighed over 60kg. She was taller than me, far from overweight and gorgeous. There was a shared sense of victory in her breaking his rule without him having a clue.
It wasn't until about 1998 that I realised how much interest I'd lost in food. Up until about 14 years old - with some exceptions - I enjoyed most food. My parents always served up hearty, delicious meals or took us to quality restaurants to sample a variety of world cuisines.
Sometime in my early teens, I switched to ordering entrees instead of main meals most of the time when we ate out. That may have given me space for desserts on some occasions, but, equally, I may have declined dessert. I claimed it was because my stomach wasn't that big. An entree-sized meal filled me up. And, arguably, it did. But it was ingrained in my mind to eat less; stay slim.
When my parents started running a motel and restaurant in country Victoria when I was in year 10, I lost more interest in food.
Most of what we ate the chefs prepared in the kitchen at the restaurant. By November 1993, I had become vegetarian. There were usually one or two vegetarian dishes on the menu at any one time, or the chefs would knock me up a quick and easy pasta. Or I'd have a bowl of fries. Or microwaved veggie burgers, sans bread or fillings.
If you have a limited range to choose from, even the most delicious meal becomes boring and repetitive. I loved snow peas until we lived there, then I just found them uninspiring. The only element I never tired of was Hasselback scalloped potatoes.
When I was at college and in my first year of working, I spent more time drinking Coke and cider and dancing than preparing food. I wasn't unhealthy. I still ate, but it was purely functional.
I rarely ate much before I went out for a night of dancing or before a session in the gym. I still won't on the occasions I do those things. Dancing or working out on a full stomach has always disagreed with me.
But between college, then work, and dancing and sleeping, there wasn't much time left for eating. At the time, I didn't see this as a problem.
However, while I completed a 365 Days project (a self-portrait a day for a year) in 2007, I looked back on a short video I made for college in 1996.
In retrospect, I think it's safe to say I was verging on anorexic. The video consisted of repeated loops of footage: me in the corner of my bedroom in a huddled position, the refrigerator door opening on an empty fridge, and the soundtrack of In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song) from David Lynch's film, Eraserhead.
Add a mild case of alcohol poisoning on a near-monthly basis, and I obviously wasn't in a good place at the time.
When I incorporated a still from the footage in my 365 Days project, I was reaching back across time to try to reassure my younger self; to attempt to help her. It took me those 10 to 11 years to see her as she was then.
Until I was about 22, I had never weighed over 53kg. And then he started feeding me.
In 1998, I started dating a partner who loved cooking. Who loved food. He'd had and has continued to have battles with food and his body, but he rekindled my taste for food after about six years. If I found a meal I enjoyed out and about, he'd figure out how to make it for us. He'd always make far more than we could eat, but somehow we would eat it all. He would make it in the belief any leftovers would be eaten the next day, but they never stayed in the dish that long.
We were both working and saving to move to the UK within six months of officially becoming a couple. We also spent three months housesitting for his parents on the outskirts of Melbourne. So our activity levels dropped dramatically. We hibernated a lot during the Australian winter, and we spent a lot of time in front of the television.
My weight went up, though not drastically so. I was simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable with that. I still didn't go above the upper ranges of the healthy weight range I'd memorised from my early teens throughout our relationship.
Between 2002 and 2007, various factors came into play that contributed to my weight gain. Depression, excess alcohol consumption, sedentary work, far less physical activity (only on rare occasions out dancing by the time I was 30), not enough sleep.
Sometime in 2007, I reached 72kg for the first time. By June 2008, I dropped again to 61kg. By November that year, I was within about 5kg of my ideal weight. By March 2010, I managed to regain all I'd lost plus some to reach my new heaviest weight thus far of 74kg, in time for a road trip from Melbourne to Brisbane with my friend Phil. Somehow I still managed to take self-portraits during that trip that I don't hate, and some are arguably my best work.
Soon after my return from the road trip, I joined a gym again, and by the time I departed for the UK in January 2011, I'd managed to drop to 67kg. I somehow lost another 2kg in transit to arrive in London, weighing 65kg. I steadily whittled that weight back down to 53kg, one kilo above my ideal weight, by February 2012.
Late in 2010, I'd met a partner when I weighed about 68kg. We decided to try out a long-distance relationship when I moved back to London.
He had been on a weight loss journey before we met, with much more baggage to shake.
We both continued to lose more weight between January 2011, when I left Australia, and February 2012, when we reunited in person for the first time in London.
Although he was proud of my achievements, that visit left me perplexed. I had reached within 1kg of my ideal weight, which had made me happier about my body, and yet, somehow, he seemed less attracted to the new "tiny" me. Although there were other factors at play, I'm not going to lie that his reduced attraction to me didn't play at least some small part in my regaining weight.
Meanwhile, to drop to that weight and maintain it (or near enough), I realised my mind had had to shift a lot. Some of it was a healthy shift. But some of it was seriously unhealthy. Not the same type of 'unhealthy' as during my late teens and early twenties, but still not healthy.
I was obsessively counting calories and weighing myself. I spent at least five hours in the gym every week in 2011. In 2012, and until I sustained a foot injury that curtailed my gym-going for a while, I often spent over seven hours in the gym per week, taking part in lots of Les Mills classes and caning myself on a stationary bike.
Whilst seven hours per week in a gym isn't unhealthy in and of itself, the internal dialogue I was having with myself was anything but healthy. The time I was in the gym was penance or payment for poor choices made in my eating and drinking habits or my lack of activity in my daily life.
When I wasn't overtly punishing myself, I was trading calories out for calories I would subsequently be able to take in. If I burned 600 calories on the bike and 450 calories in a Body Pump class, I could eat that pizza or drink that cider, and everything would be okay.
Whilst reducing my weight to my ideal in 2011/2012, even the MyFitnessPal app ceased telling me how much I could expect to lose in five weeks "if every day were like today". I was regularly achieving a deficit in calories in/calories out that was deemed unhealthy. I consumed fewer than 1,200 calories and often burned more than 1,000 calories. Even fitness apps have a conscience.
By January 2013, I'd developed what a GP believed to be Morton's neuroma in my left foot. It was subsequently successfully treated as rheumatoid arthritis in one of the toe joints. The pain in my toe was so severe that it forced me to cut down and then stop exercising entirely.
After cortisone injections, I was discouraged from any impact exercise - running, jogging, jumping - for a while, at least, but possibly permanently. I was also warned not to wear high heels - even low ones - for any period. They would place more pressure on the ball of my foot and potentially rekindle the issue.
With my exercise options and time at the gym somewhat limited, I still spent a lot of time on the stationary bike. I was still keeping my weight within a reasonable range, but it crept up again over time, much of it caused by a lack of exercise and an excess of alcohol. But also through continuing to consume large quantities of food. That quantity of food was acceptable while I was exercising to excess. But, without the exercise to trade the "calories out" against the "calories in", there was a gradual weight increase.
Mixed in there, though not directly related to my weight, my relationship broke down. That contributed to more poor decisions on eating, drinking and exercise as well as depression, anxiety and poor sleep.
Since then, I've hit new highs and had lows again, though not as low as 53kg.
I've tried to be kinder to myself. More gentle.
I've tried to see myself the way I see other women now. Not the way I used to see other women, which was in an internalised misogynistic fat-shaming way. I see other women in a way where I don't think, "She would be beautiful if she lost some weight". I think "She is beautiful". And her weight - whichever end of the spectrum it is, or in the middle - doesn't influence why I see her that way.
It takes a lot of work. I can more easily see others as beautiful irrespective of their weight than I can look at myself in the mirror. Or look at photos others have taken of me when I'm overweight. Or that I'd taken of myself years ago when I was 70kg+.
It's still hard. I still have to re-train myself every time I look at photos of myself. It contributes heavily to why I don't take self-portraits anymore, though I want to.
But, even without being overweight, when I weighed in the low to mid-50s, I could pick apart every inch of my body to tell you what still needed work. What still made me "less than".
I've also grown up in a culture where to be desired is everything, even when I can see past a relationship being a measure of my worth. If I'm 100% honest, desire is still something I use to measure my self-worth. Lack of desire within a relationship is probably an even harder pill for me to swallow.
And it's so easy - when a former lover admits they find me less attractive due to my weight gain - to fall back into unhealthy behaviours, to punish myself. Because maybe my weight gain led to me being less desirable and to our break-up. But that doesn't fix anything that wasn't already broken. And it won't help me be who I want and need to be going forward.
Depending on the day of the week or the hour of the day. How many hours since my last meal and how much or how little I ate the day before. I weigh about 10kg less than I weighed at the new heaviest weight I reached a year ago.
I'm not "happy" with my current weight. I'm not "happy" with how I look, how my clothes fit me and how I look naked. And I know I have a lot of unhealthy habits.
But I also know many of my previous tactics that kept me at or helped me back to around 52kg aren't healthy.
I have to regularly remind myself that those who've never had an issue with weight will rarely understand or empathise. Whether blessed with a fast metabolism or never experienced an eating disorder, addiction or mental health issue.
I need to find a healthier way to get back to being strong and fit and resolve issues I have with my lower back strength. Not to mention regaining strength and confidence with my left ankle after the fracture I sustained in October 2019.
I need to continue to seek a healthier relationship with my body. I've been trying for so long. You would think it would become easier over time, but it doesn't.
shards of glass
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 11 June 2021].
O hai.
For today's* share, may I present you with a reflected self-portrait taken looking up at the metal on the covered area around Gasholder Park in King’s Cross?
I took this toward the beginning of a photo walk along Regent's Canal in London with fellow photographer and good friend Scott Hortop in November 2016.
I have photos from that day of the development in progress still to edit and share.
I have also been working through some of the photos from that day for my Love letters to London. Thus how I came across this one again, previously unedited and unshared, though I shared a similar shot from my iPhone on the day.
Even though it's now officially Friday here in London, let's pretend this is a #ThrowbackThursday post. Something I haven't done for a while. At least not in terms of self-portraits.
Walking along the canal that day, I was called back by an agency offering me work with a company I'd interviewed with on the day after the 2016 US election. A day when the world felt like it had inexorably turned away from sanity. The last company I worked for as an employee (for now, but maybe forever...?) I started there four days later as a temp.
The agency called me as I walked along the canal not far from the second office of the first employer I worked for in London in 2000. Maybe I should have seen that as an omen...
*Today being Thursday, though it's now technically Friday. There's a strong chance I'll share a Friday photo in a short while, as I'll be out much of tomorrow.
watching the watchers
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 14 January 2021].
What are they watching?
Answers on a postcard.
(Or, you know, in the comments will do).
crying in the shower
I mostly cry in the shower. Or more specifically, in the bath, because I can't currently stand to shower.
I could be all poetic and say it's because I can hide my tears, even from myself, in the shower. The tears mingle freely with the spray from the shower rose as I douse my head; rinse shampoo and conditioner from my locks.
But it's not that. It's just that they seem to come most freely in there. Where the white noise from the water and the exhaust fan drown out everything but my own voluble and constant thoughts. Thoughts I can no longer shut out.
Crying in the shower feels cleansing; even just for a day. Until my next shower; the next time I'm completely alone with my thoughts again, and they well up, unbidden, once more.
The shower might be where I find myself in tears the most often, but lately I find myself crying almost anywhere. Everywhere. I struggle to think of a day in the past couple of months where tears didn't catch in my throat, even if I somehow managed to stifle them from pouring forth.
The first time they came, despite my best efforts, when saying goodbye at the end of a heartrending afternoon to a woman who looked like my mother, but only briefly appeared to be her, in glimpses.
She knew me when I arrived. She greeted me with open arms and a hug, despite her confused state about almost everything else. That gave me hope for just a little while, but as she repeated the same questions over and over to the hospital staff and my father, that hope died a little each time. My heart broke when she wanted to leave with us, saying 'I just want to spend time with both of you', but we knew we couldn't take her with us for at least another day.
I tried to hide the tears from my heartbroken father over the coming days, but they choked me when I tried to speak more often than I could control.
When my mother told me in one of her lucid moments, 'Don't ever let this happen to you', I hid my tears over her shoulder as I hugged her close, and left the room as soon as she became distracted with one of her newfound obsessive rituals. Barely able to breath, the tears finally streaming down my face in the next room.
Since then, I've cried in shock, in pain, in frustration and anger. In fear and panic. For what I've lost; what I'm losing.
Through my life, I've mostly managed to go without crying much in public. Not unrestrained ugly crying, at least.
But I was crying in the airport as I turned away to go through Security after she asked me when I'd be back and told me to come back soon. I told her I would, knowing full well that by the time I return she'll be gone; one way or another. As I promised, I saw that she could see the look in my eyes, and she looked like she knew she should look the same but she seemed confused about what to feel; why I might have that look in my eyes.
And I ugly-cried in a light plane over Bass Strait. I didn't care that the stewardess could see me as she went through her safety demonstration. I didn't care that the other passengers could hear my sniffles and sobs. I couldn't have stopped it, even if I'd cared.
For about a week my morning ritual consisted of tears. Tears of frustration at myself and others for the things I couldn't do unaided. For shower roses out of reach. Over the inability to lower myself to the floor of the shower or raise myself to standing to get dry. Over being left alone to do things I would usually do alone, but I couldn't.
When my mind manages to drift away from family for a while, I've cried for things I wish to be so, and things I believe will never be. I've cried in his arms. I've cried because I can't be in his arms.
Every day I've felt sure I have no more tears left, but then I tell someone about my mum. I talk with my dad and watch the heartbreak wash over his face again. We cry together over Skype, and I cry later about being so far away when all this is happening. For not being able to take away the hurt, the frustration; for not being able to change any of this.
I cry because she's already gone. Even if she's not yet gone.
And then I cry some more.
nesting
She stumbled toward the edge of the forest. Broken, bewildered, disoriented. She wasn't sure quite how she got here or quite how she was going to get home. She wasn't really certain of anything, of anyone. Of herself.
As she entered the forest, the birds gathering on branches above her called to one another. An insect hum provided a white noise bass line to their melody. The snap and crack of branches underfoot as she walked further into the forest created a syncopated, faltering percussion.
As she walked by one of the redwoods, she stumbled, her bare foot catching on a fern frond curling across the forest floor. She reached for the strong, thick old trunk of the tree; grasping it to catch her fall. Though the bark of the tree scraped skin from her forearms as she embraced it to stop from falling, she held it tighter as she regained her footing, as though her life depended upon it (and maybe it did).
She turned and leaned her back against the tree’s trunk, listening to the sounds above her. She closed her eyes and let the sounds - primarily the birdsong - wash over her. She became vaguely aware of the sap from the redwood’s trunk dripping at a seemingly glacial speed onto her shoulder as she stood, mesmerised by nature.
She shook her head, brushed her wild mane of hair back from her face, opened her eyes and looked around her. Eyes lingering on the eternity of trees stretching out in front of her, then the glimpses of sky through the canopy overhead, then falling on a cluster of mushrooms at the base of the trunk of the next ancient, towering tree.
She wove her way through the forest like a somnambulist. Dazed, her eyes unfocused. She felt like she'd somehow ended up being the last person on earth. She felt isolated, yet liberated. Free from other people, the crowds, the harsh sounds of the city. Surrounded by creatures possessed with the gift of flight, of music; self-sufficient in nature, without any need of humans.
She watched as a squirrel scurried across the forest floor and ascended to a branch to hoard its findings. She watched ants moving in armies up and down the length of a tree trunk, carrying morsels from the undergrowth into a knot in the wood. She envied them the simplicity of their lives. The ordered way in which the ants collaborated and cooperated. The home the squirrel had made overhead.
As she walked, she stooped from time to time to gather up some of the larger fallen branches until her arms were full. She moved toward a nearby clearing and carefully arranged the branches on the ground. She gathered more branches, not really thinking closely about what she was doing, just following some sort of instinct; a calming instruction sent directly from her mind to her limbs. She moved back and forth between the trees; selecting, collecting, depositing, nesting.
After a time the branches took on a form; a circular, welcoming shape that drew her in, made her feel more calm, more settled. At home. She continued adding to her construction, not thinking, just doing. Like the ants, but alone. The placement of the branches methodical, precise, yet appearing haphazard. The curve of the branches raised on one side and lower on the other; like some sort of pottery dish moulded by an amateur not yet skilled in the art of ceramics.
She paused as she approached her construction. Surveying it to assess whether it needed anything further, or was it complete? A gentle smile touched her lips as she decided it would do perfectly.
Her bare feet raw and stinging from walking back and forth across the forest floor; across twigs and branches and the odd soft cluster of fallen leaves and scattered fern fronds. Her shoulders and back warm with a satisfying ache from bending, lifting and carrying. She stepped into the circle of branches, bent her knees and gently placed her arse, thighs and lower back against the curve of the side of her construction, and leaning to one side, moulded her spine along the wall of the nest. Her hair tumbled over her face, obscuring her vision as she closed her eyes and the sound of the birdsong seemed to lift in her ears. She wrapped her arms around herself, embracing her aching body.
As she lay there in the forest, the thick smells from the undergrowth seeped into her nostrils. The smell of the wood, the soil, the musty smell of the mushrooms growing nearby. In her ears the continuing call and answer of the birds overhead, the hum of insects echoing across the space.
As she curled into herself further, one sentence gently circled in her mind: I am home.
colour theory
It started slowly at first. Shoes, of course, were a given. Socks were par for the course, though she always ensured they were as close to the original pairing as possible. Being the same colour and style wasn't enough. They needed to be of a pretty exact equal length, equally worn. At least bought at the same time, even if it wasn't possible to ensure they were a 100% matching pair from those bought.
She rarely owned matching knicker sets. Apart from the few sets of His Pants for Her pastel no-underwire bras and panties she had in early high school. Most days she could only match her blacks and her whites when it came to her bra and knickers.
So she settled for matching her tops, knickers and socks instead, where she could. If she wore a red top, you could be certain her underpants and socks were also red. If she wore a blue, black or white top, her socks and jocks would match. If she couldn't match them, she at least tried to work with complementary colours. In those days, her wardrobe consisted of blue denim and corduroy jeans, black trousers, black skirts (often worn over the trousers), a scuffed-up pair of 8-up Docs, and a navy blue pair of scuffed-up Converse One Stars. Variety in terms of colours was restricted to her tops, underpants and socks.
The colour-matching of socks, jocks and tops became a bit of an obsession. Sort of like a lucky charm wrapped around her to get her through the day; keep her safe. And it stretched on for many years until finally, she settled on a favourite skirt style and her mother offered to make her skirts for work based on that.
Standing in the fabric store with her mother she picked out various shades of blues and purples, and a burgundy. Her mother matched the material with lining and disappeared into her sewing room to make the skirts for her. Voila! A full week's worth of skirts and a variety of tops to match with them. At that point, her colour coordination obsession really started to amp up. She still had plain black or white shirts. But now whenever she went looking for more tops for work she would ensure they complemented the selection of colours from her collection of skirts.
Pretty soon she had her top and skirt combos down pat. A bit of switching between tops depending on the weather, the season, or her mood, but she had a colour-driven uniform. Her opaque tights and her shoes were still black, but from neck to knee she wore one colour, sometimes just one tone.
When she wore dresses they were vibrant and colourful vintage dresses or pastel 'granny' dresses found in charity shops. In the warm Melbourne summers she rarely wore tights, but in winter she would pair dresses with black opaque tights.
Until she discovered a treasure trove of vibrant and colourful opaque tights in a local mall and fell in love. By this point, the arse had literally fallen out of her last pair of secondhand men's Levi 501s. That gave her the perfect excuse to buy a pair of opaque tights in every colour (except yellow or orange, because ugh!) She even managed to overlook the misspelling of the brand of tights as 'Tention'.
In high school and college, she favoured black and white film for her photography. She found colour distracting from form and composition, and felt her colour work was always weaker. More likely to be 'record' shots than anything creative. In the moment, all she could see would be the colours. But when she got the prints back, all she would see was the bad composition and lacklustre images. Her wardrobe had always been pretty colourful, but that sense of colour hadn't managed to translate into her photography.
Now she started visualising photographic ideas with colour as the starting point. Her self-portraits and portraits were often inspired by an outfit or a setting, and without fail, that usually came with a particular colour. The colour of the material; the colour of the interior of a space; the colours of the landscape. She learnt to work with the colours first so they were integral to the image, but didn't distract from it. Remembering the colour theory she'd studied at college, she could now create a palette for a shoot before raising the viewfinder to her eye or setting up her tripod.
By the end of her self-portrait project, she'd fallen in love with green with red, green with pink, and pink with red. And blue with orange, blue with pink, and blue with red. And blue and green, though others told her they should never be seen without a colour in between (for what it’s worth, the sky and trees beg to differ).
As soon as she thought about a new-old dress she'd bought at a charity shop she could think of exactly where she wanted to set her next self-portrait. The ideas would bleed into her mind in full colour.
And then she moved back to London. And rediscovered Hush Puppies. And fell in love with colour even more than she already had been. Her work days were head-to-toe colour. Solid blues, reds or purples. Vibrant colour combinations. Or a single eye-catching accent colour to brighten up a black dress and shoes.
That obsessive colour-coordination may also have seeped into her home with linen matched to wallpaper, paint or photographs hung on the walls.
She surrounds herself with colour.
in dreams
Another restless night. She doesn't know any other sort of sleep. She doesn't always wake from sleep during the night, but often the act of sleeping is more tiring than not sleeping.
Her dreams are, by turns: disturbing, hilarious, heartbreaking, nostalgic, violent, melancholy, full of love, full of anger and frustration, sad, arousing. Sometimes they are all that at once. They are always vivid and full of passion, whatever the overarching sense is.
Sometimes she wishes she didn’t feel things so intensely, even in sleep. But when friends or family tell her they don't dream — or at least they don't remember their dreams — it makes her feel sad for them. She would never want to stop dreaming, or to stop remembering most of her dreams. Despite all the ways her body physically ties in knots during the night. Despite all the ways her mind mangles itself as her eyes flicker under their lids in the dark. She would never will that other world away; want it gone.
The tension in her muscles. The ache in her bones. The tangle of nerves under her pale skin as her body physically responds to what is happening in her dream (or is the storyline in her dream dictated by the sensations in her resting body as it recovers from the previous day, week, months?)
She feels the emotional and mental sensations of her dreams through her body as she sleeps and wonders that it remains mostly prone while she’s unconscious. She wonders that she doesn't wake up physically entangled by her bedsheets, imprisoned in them, given the way her mind and heart often feel when she wakes from dreams in tears or in anger, her throat dry and hoarse as though she’s been screaming or yelling in reality as well her imagination.
From time to time she’s awoken by her own voice, albeit trapped in the back of her throat. She wakes to uncontrollable tears. To shaking; to breathlessness or ragged breathing; to unutterable fear and a racing heart. That one time she woke to laughter, her own, opening her eyes to find her partner staring at her through the morning light, incredulous at the sight of someone laughing in her sleep.
She dreams of sleepy, but impassioned, entanglements as her body lies beside another. So vivid that when she wakes to find them breathing deeply, sleeping soundly, she’s startled it was just a dream. The pleasurable ache between her legs lingers for long moments after waking, making her question everything around her.
Most nights her body temperature rises. She sleeps lightly clothed, aware that too much material close to her skin will cause her to overheat. Will cause her to wake in the night, her hair a damp mass encircling her neck, strangling her.
Other nights she shivers, feverishly, though the night be mild. Conscious of the need to add layers, she nevertheless dreads uncurling herself and unwrapping herself from her bedclothes to venture into the fresh night air to find more clothing. She curls into herself, knees drawn up to belly, elbows and wrists aligned, cupped hands clasped together and nestled between neck and pillow.
She dreams of houses she's lived in and those she can only dream of living in. She revisits houses she's never physically stepped foot in, but that she remembers from other dreams. Houses of many rooms, and many corridors twisting and turning. Lavish in parts; derelict in others. She makes her home in them or moves from them. Oftentimes they unexpectedly fall apart, become derelict, or she simply finds herself evicted.
For months before and after travel she dreams of planes and missed flights; of being far from home; of uprooting her life yet again to other shores.
She dreams of family long gone as though they weren't. Those dreams are often the hardest, as it's like saying goodbye all over again as she wakes.
She learned years ago that if you force yourself to wake from a bad dream to escape it, you need to fully wake, rouse yourself completely from the dream, or you will fall back into the same dream. But if you are woken prematurely from a beautiful, pleasurable dream, you can never just fall back into it, no matter how you let your mind run over the memory of the dream as you fall back into slumber.
Her mind is a tapestry to be woven then picked apart. An embroidery to be carefully created with fine needlework only to be tattered with sharp blades. It creates its own reality, then breaks it up into a million pieces. All within a matter of hours. Every night.
poker face
every morning and every night she stood in front of the mirror practising her poker face. hoping one day she might master the art of hiding her true feelings when she most needed to. she stared deep into her own eyes, willing herself to lose all expression; keep her eyes fixed upon her own eyes; let no betraying tic or flicker of lashes reveal what she was really feeling inside. what she really thought. of herself. of them. of this whole situation.
just when she thought she might have finally managed it. managed to hide everything away, even from herself, the mask would slip. just a little. a flash of anger; a glimpse of sorrow; a wave of confusion; or a flicker of frustration. it would slide across her face, like a ripple on the surface of a pool of water as a droplet disturbs it. she would flinch as she realised the mask had slipped. curse herself and her inability to keep her mask in place.
it was often the smallest thing. a slight tic in her eyelid; a soft turn-up or down of her mouth. but enough to reveal the thoughts she tried so studiously to keep close to her heart. away from prying eyes. the emotions she tried to keep out of reach of others. of herself.
as she gazed into the mirror she tried to withdraw everything back into herself. back in on itself. coil it up, bury it.
she might manage to hold the mask in place for an hour; sometimes she could only hold it for a minute. she tried to summon up complete emptiness; apathy; vacancy; a vacant stare; a distant stare; a wall between herself and her reflection.
she hoped by mastering her poker face she could shut out all feelings. get above and out of everything around her. isolate herself from them, this, even herself. she felt perhaps it would be like a higher level of freedom. a cocoon. a haven away from all of this.
she had to at least try. she returned her own gaze. she held it longer this time. she felt strong. she felt safe. she felt separate from everything. connected, but disconnected, from herself. here but somewhere else; nowhere. she felt full and empty at the same time, but pushed the feeling of fullness down until emptiness filled the space inside her.
she watched herself closely. barely able to breathe. afraid that at any moment this feeling of empty tranquility would be shattered. that it would be lost. that the mask would slip again. she kept time listening to her own heartbeat in her ears. it was regular and slow, loud; she felt it pulsing beneath her skin. the pulse was reassuring, soothing, calming. she focussed on her heartbeat. focussed on her breathing. focussed on her eyes gazing back at her from the mirror. tried not to let the mask slip. tried to let it all fall away except the mask.
she watched the mask as she breathed, as her heart beat in her ears. she watched the stillness of the mask. the blank, smooth surface. for a moment she imagined it slipping, but she drove the thought from her mind and it stayed in place. or did it? was she absolutely sure it hadn't slipped? her heartbeat quickened, her breath caught ever so slightly, she tried to withdraw back into the emptiness to slow her heart, steady her breathing. but it was too late. the mask had definitely slipped. her poker face had dropped away in an instant. again. despite all her attempts to keep it in place.
she watched as it crumbled; melted; melded; mutated. it all slipped away, out of her hands, out of her control. her face went ashen; her mouth betrayed her with the tremble of a lip. she watched as the mask slid from her face, to the floor again. she couldn't look herself in the eye any longer. she shook, she gasped, she tried not to sob.
she didn't know if she could pick up the mask again, but she had to try. she had to bring it back up to cover up all she felt inside. they couldn't know, they couldn't see. she had to try again. and again. and again. until she got it right. until she had perfected it. her poker face. the wall between her and the rest of the world. the safe cushioned surface to protect her from them, you, us. but mostly from herself.
a cool place
One of my new year's resolutions is coming along well so far: work fewer hours in my day job.
Aside from being ill yesterday, the two days I've worked so far this year I've stuck to the required number of working hours (or thereabouts).
So, to celebrate I revisited a self-portrait taken on this day 11 years ago and gave it a fresh edit for Throwback Thursday.
One of the many times my string of bathrooms became a studio for my self-portraiture (as well as providing a cool respite from sweltering Australian summers).
in my secret life
This update comes a little late, given we posted at the start of December, but the current weaving words into light collaboration between Sarah Mercer and myself, was inspired by Leonard Cohen's song, 'In My Secret Life'.
With the arrival of the new year, I'm determined to make a stronger effort to post updates to my blog, whether in the form of new work I'm creating, or older images I've managed to now work through and edit.
I managed to edit quite a lot of older work during the past year or so, but very little of it made it onto my blog, or even onto my website, so I hope to rectify that this year. Many of the posts will be image posts, but maybe I'll even manage some words here and there.
2013 was a good year for the most part, though for much of it I felt like I was in a holding pattern:
I made a conscious effort to minimise my shooting and concentrate on the mammoth backlog of images stored on my hard drives that had not been seen by anyone but myself. I managed to complete editing of thousands of photographs taken during a road trip in 2009, another road trip in 2010, and the majority of photographs taken during my residency at Hospitalfield in 2011. The bulk of posts to come will allow you to see that work.
I'm still working through the self-portraits from my residency and working on creating my interior / exterior book, and I'll keep you updated on the progress of that.
I was pleased to have my work exhibited in London for the first time in October, at the Printspace. That was definitely a highlight for me. I hope it will be only the first of many exhibitions here in the UK.
My partner, Kyle, joined me in London in mid-July, which was a pretty momentous and long-anticipated event, after having been in London for 2.5 years already myself at that point. We are quite excited that in the next week or so we will move into a flat of our own, which will no doubt give a greater opportunity for new shoots. Effectively living in one overcrowded bedroom can tend to stifle one's inspiration.
2014 is definitely feeling like a year of promising beginnings and it is upon my shoulders to ensure I maintain momentum. I am optimistic...
now playing: the be good tanyas - only in the past
breaking down
In July I entered The Printspace's 'Movement' competition and was surprised and delighted to find my image, in pursuit of perpetual motion, was shortlisted, and then subsequently selected as Editor's Choice.
Today The Printspace featured me on their blog.
My image will also be included in the upcoming SoShowMe IV exhibition at The Printspace's gallery here in London. More details as they come to hand...
now playing: pink floyd - see emily play
copper
now playing: diablo swing orchestra - heroines
curiouser and curiouser
now playing: the divine comedy - arthur c. clarke's mysterious world