Contact

  

I can’t remember when I last wrote a post. I think it was last week. I’m finding the days are lethargic and grey yet disappear in haste simultaniously.

It has been 9 weeks since I held my little boy and I have relented, wearily tying a white flag, I have surrendered to sadness and depression. Everything I eat tastes of cardboard, I am unable to sleep for more than 4 hours, I am desperate to read a book but I turn my nose up at every title. I just cannot concentrate. The small window of time in which I manage to leave the house I try to take a camera with me, to capture what’s around, what I’m seeing through my tired eyes. After all, that’s what I promised Robyn I would do. The films sit on the kitchen table for days until I can muster the motivation to develop them. Then they hang drying in the bathroom longer than they should because I am too tired to cut them down into strips. And processing prints is a huge task. High levels of energy and concentration combined are required. That’s where the trusted contact sheet comes in handy, a middle ground for my lacklustre functioning but an imperative and rewarding part of the photography process. You can’t learn how to take better photographs without contact sheets and you can’t receive the positive reinforcement of the activity if you don’t process anything. 

So here I am laying low in the middle ground of the contact sheet. Learning that I don’t take a photo with an audience in mind, I take a photo to record where I am not just physically but where I am in life. To me, photographs are my journal. I can look at negatives from 17 years ago and remember exactly where I was in my head at that time. I remember all that I felt and that was happening. My hope is that the rolls of film and photographs may one day form a body of memories and a diary of dialogue about when Robyn came into our lives and changed them forever. I’ve no doubt my attempt to provide his memory with a window to the world will ultimately provide me with a mirror in which to peer into and learn about myself too. In time.

For now life is just a blur and I am still unaware which way is up. The notion that life is meaningless is pressed up so close against my face I can see my breath. There is no gap for explanations or ideas of a meaningful life.