spool

I’m really loving using my old Pentax ME. It used to belong to my Father, and I used it for seventh form photography twelve or so years ago with very mixed results… I remember spending a lot of time trying to take the perfect late-afternoon photo of the old art deco armchair that lived in my bedroom – the curlicue indentations in the tapestry reminded me of the flowers in Botticelli’s La Primavera, and I thought I could capture the imaginative transposition of that millefleur carpet. Really, though, I just kept ending up with black, dust specked photos with a brillant strip of sunlight that illuminated nubbly wool and the ghosts of flowers.

I wonder where the space in photography between realism and imagination is. This must be an art. At the moment though I’m just practicing the skill – making sure I get things in focus and have enough light. I am a lazy photographer often, though… I like to point and shoot and hope that the magic of the moment will carry over onto film somehow.

My friend Cassie lent me a Diana camera recently, and Dave thinks it might suit me well… I imagine I will quite like the imperfection and the dreaminess its images. I look forward to stalking him and Milla around the house and taking photos of them with it.

They are my favourite subjects at the moment.

curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase

Roland and Maude’s obsession with clean white sheets in A.S. Byatt’s Posession has always resonated with me.  I love sleeping, and slow crumpled mornings tangled in bed linen… the warm, lingering sweetness of being in bed with someone you hold dear.  It is such moments that make the coming day seem so promising and that I find myself looking forward to as I drift into sleep.  No light is quite as good as that early morning light.  I love these moments.

I notice I’m not alone, however.  Claire Sloan takes beautiful time-lapse photographs of herself sleeping.  They are blurred and soft, the light is perfect.

And another Claire has a darling autobiographical flickr set of photographs of her recently vacated bed.  They always carry within them a yearning, a desire to not have to get up and leave the one she loves and go out into the greyness. To remain, swimming in vintage sheets and golden light in an empty room.

I had an interesting conversation with my dear friend Katrina recently, about the value of day-to-day happiness. Mornings spent between my red sheets are one such happiness for me.  A comma, a pause.