Rocks and a Nude (Prospect, Nova Scotia)

The way in which photographs are made has never before been a subject for contemplation in my work. I went out, I made images, I went home. This is no longer true.

4"x5" film

Prospect lies a 40 minute drive outside Halifax, a quiet fishing town with only a line of glacial bedrock protecting it from the Atlantic Ocean. Outside the town, the shore is an unbroken flood of granite, scattered with boulders and rock fields left by the last ice age.

4"x5" film

In some ways, on this day all the progress of the past month came into clarity - I gave up making images, and literally simply let them come to me. Sasha and Wendy, who accompanied me, disappeared over the horizon as I was drawn to image after image, finding the creative process effortless and fluid as it never has before. The elements which the dialogue with Joy has introduced to my work wove with my own aesthetics, bringing subjects to my camera which I would have ignored before, and breathing life into them. The images came so fast on this day that I literally was reacting with my camera, responding to what was presented to me..

4"x5" film

At the very end of the evening, as the sun was disappearing behind the hills, a perfect site for nudes presented itself to me; and as it did, Sasha waltzed over the hill, come to search for his wayward photographer. He quickly agreed the site needed a body and went to work. Opting to use colour film, we made a dozen images before the light failed so much that it became impractical to photograph. All of us sat on the hilltop and watched the sun set, reveling in the dying of a very satisfying day.

6x12 cm film

The work I produced on this day was some of the most spontaneous and strong in my life, and I can only hope the gifts being revealed to me this summer can continue.