I haunt the Ouseburn Valley. I live on its lip and descend into it daily. My habitual walks through it are comforting, and I can often be seen outside its cafes and bars, illuminated by a laptop and serial cigarettes. I don’t drink these days, but make up for it with too much coffee.
I’ve lived in this neighbourhood for about two years now and I love it. Pretty much everything I (personally) need is in this square mile and I barely ever leave it. Thinking about that too much makes me claustrophobic, as life feels much small these days than it did a few years ago, but in truth, I don’t want for much. I have my tiny flat full of books and records, a wonderful community I feel a part of, and I have a dozen places to sit with my laptop to write the day away. It is bliss to me. I’ll be sad when my time here is over.
Still, it surprises me that I’ve not yet gotten bored of this square mile yet, but it’s hard to get complacent when it changes so much with the seasons and the daily drama of its light.
Newcastle has been a treat for someone re-engaging with a love of photography. I haven’t taken photos with any seriousness for a few years now, slipping into Moriyama-style black-and-white photography in lockdown, which has gripped me for almost four years now. The reason for this, if I’m honest with myself, is that I didn’t think I’d have much use for my photographs outside of using them in potential book projects, and so it seemed useful to shoot in a high-contrast black-and-white mode that suited itself to ink on cheap paper. If I stuck with it beyond that, it’s because I like photographs that feel textural, although that makes them pretty inapt for documentary purposes. But maybe that too is why I liked it. Nevertheless, at the start of this year, I realised that I’d gotten stuck in this over-stylised mode and it was time for a change.
Embarrassed that I didn’t even know about half the fun things my little Ricoh camera could do, I mixed up my settings and headed out repeatedly into the cold. Here are some of the first results, taken between the 12th and 16th of January, mostly on walks to and from work. There’ll be more to come.
I’m so glad you’re posting again. You don’t know me, and really we have very little in common except that you love to write long involved autotheoretic literary blog posts and I love to read them. I’ve followed your blog for ages and consider it an old friend, and I missed it when it was gone. All your new posts showed up in my rss feed reader in a lump today. I dropped everything to read them with great pleasure. So glad to have your words (and photos) back in my life.