Requiem on Full Steam
On the moment of achieving project momentum
By April 2024 I was well and truly set on making my Cambo Actus with a Phase back my primary photographic system. I was slowly picking up second-hand Rodenstock lenses in Copal shutters. What is more I had a purpose.
I shot in Millington over the Christmas break in 2023 and that had rekindled an interest in a long-term theme I had running on the impact of ash dieback disease on the ash trees. But by March I had made the key step of finally working out the structure for the work. I have been fascinated for years by the work of Christopher Nolan and the idea had come to me to structure the work like a non-linear three-act screenplay.
This realisation meant that I had a clear idea of what I wanted Acts I, II and III to contain and – like at Mulgrave – the realisation transformed how I worked. I knew Act III needed to be about living after death and full of symbolic representation using themes from the Requiem Mass text.
Once I had verbalised that idea, explaining it to Dave Tolcher, I quickly visited looking for that kind of image and made one of the key images almost immediately – that is for another day. But this main image which was to become the signature or seed image for Act III was made in April the week before I set out to join Dave, Guy Aubertin and Joe Cornish for a fantastic and seminal trip to Eigg.
The main image was made using my standard 70mm lens. I shot it looking downhill from near the top of the valley and used my technical camera and base tilt movements to set the back flat – that is one reason it has such an unusual photographic perspective. I used an LCC to handle the massive light fall-off and colour casts I got from the edge of the Rodenstock lens and the IQ3 respectively. The theme was clear – a statement of the start of abstract deconstruction.
The alternative image was shot on the same day and these two images ended up bookending the whole of Act III. I was reminded of Hockney’s stumps – like tombstones or memorials for the ash trees. Themes that would be further developed over the next 12 months.
There is a magic moment in project-orientated work where the project shape becomes defined and you have clear ideas to look out for on location. That is the moment of momentum. I love it and it is why so much of my work is about sets of connected images rather than single hero images – those do happen of course – but constructing a sequence or portfolio of images and the journey that takes you on for me is where all the fun and creativity lies in art and photography.
