The Reward of Staying with One Subject

There is a temptation in photography to keep moving. Another beach, another view, another subject. Something new can make us feel that we are making progress, even before we have looked at it properly.

I understand that temptation. But my recent work at West Wittering has reminded me that moving on is not always the most rewarding use of creative time. Sometimes it is worth staying with something long enough for the obvious photograph to give way to a more personal one.

I returned to the beach three times, drawn by its scale. The structures were small against that expanse of water and sky. At first, I saw markers and rows of posts. On returning, I began to see them differently. They became punctuation, small black notes on a very white page.

The subject had not become more elaborate. My attention had changed.

That is one of the rewards of returning. We no longer have to spend quite so much energy discovering what is there. We can begin to notice how it sits within the space around it. A line of posts can feel measured and deliberate from one position, then almost disappear from another. A marker can hold an entire frame, not because it is large or dramatic, but because of the emptiness surrounding it.

The tide changes the relationships. Water covers one part of the beach and reveals another. A reflection extends a form, or softens it. What seemed important on the first visit may become something to leave outside the frame on the next.

I do not think repetition has to mean making the same photograph again. It can be a way of asking a better question.

How little is needed? Where does the eye settle? Does this frame need a figure, or does it need to be left alone? Those questions interest me more than collecting another view simply because I have not photographed it before.

There is also something freeing about giving ourselves a smaller area to work within. The possibilities do not necessarily become smaller with it. They become more particular. Instead of trying to make something of everything, we can follow one thought and see where it leads.

The six photographs in WITTERING / ISOLATED grew from this approach. They share a place and a small vocabulary of forms, but I did not want them to be interchangeable. The interest lies in what changes between them, the balance of dark and light, the movement of the shore, the presence of a figure, the space left unoccupied.

Working as a small collection also asks something different of me. An individual photograph can stand alone. A group needs each frame to contribute, rather than simply repeat what its neighbour has already said.

I would not suggest that we should stop exploring. New places can open our eyes. But there is a difference between exploration and the feeling that we must always find something new to justify the time we spend creating.

A familiar subject can still surprise us. It may simply ask for more patience.

For me, the reward at Wittering was not finding six different subjects. It was spending enough time with a few simple ones to begin seeing them on my own terms.

Perhaps that is a useful question to carry into the next creative morning. Not only where shall I go, but what have I moved past too quickly?