This text was written as I learn to live with Long Covid and attempt to regain my creativity. All the posts and some more info can be found here.
Scribbled at the bottom of the to-do list stuck to my wall with a strip of washi tape, the words look at me and wait. Tidy photos in tablet. Archive. Take stock.
This line has been on the list for a few weeks but I have done nothing about it. I have barely photographed over the past six months and I have lost track of where I am with editing and what new photos may gather digital dust in the camera SD card. I need to assess where I stand if I do not want to feel overwhelmed with photography.
I am unsure I even want to photograph. For months, all I have done is create snapshots with my phone. This is photography of course but not the kind I want to do or really enjoy. For that, I need my camera. Only, I have come to learn that I do not photograph when I'm unwell. I have been unwell for a long time.
The last time I remembered photographing was in October when I visited a small part of Cornwall with my partner for a week. My memories of the experience are not good. The gestures felt automatic, forced out of habit rather than out of a desire to photograph and play with the compositions all around me.
Upon my return, I crashed and hung up the camera. It remained on its hook for months. Occasionally, a scene in the house would spark a quiet moment of photography. A flicker of light I would love so much I'd turn the camera on. Somehow there was always just enough juice in the battery for this before the camera returned to its hibernation.
I knew I would return to the art of image making, eventually. I didn't know when but I knew it could not be forced. I had to feel it, whatever that means. Last Friday, I finally did. For no reason and with no impetus I can pinpoint, I sat down at my desk, I plugged in the camera and tablet to charge via the computer. I opened the folders containing images and started the slow work of archiving in a hard drive and taking stock.
There were barely any images past October. There were less images from the summer than I thought there might be but each brought back a memory, all of them tinged bittersweet with pain and anger and sadness and emptiness and brief moments of calm and beauty. Maybe this is what I was waiting for, the ability to look at these images without feeling the keen ache of the emotions wrapped into them.
I have not photographed much since. Fatigue has been the hallmark of my week-end and if the last few months have taught me anything it's the importance of rest and pacing. It's hard when I want to do things but those are an unshakeable conditions I need to abide by if I want to take part in my life. So rest I did. I turned the TV on, watched endless reruns of Murder, She Wrote and in between small naps and murders, I edited images. One at a time. I remembered cycling in Scotland. I remembered the light in the house. I remembered the few excursions that brought me joy. I imagined a future with a new collection of images. The visual black hole of the past few months has come to an end.
