Maybe I have been reading too many books…
My mind is full of ideas about traces on the landscape. Greg Humphries explains in his book Walking Backwards, that telling stories about places ‘creates connection between the land we experience outside and ourselves and our inner landscape’ (Humphries and Vayne, 2018, p. 27). Merlin Coverley says that when we are walking, we are ‘picking up the threads of past lives and following in the process of spinning out our own’ (Coverley, 2012 , p. 13). My favourite of all, Justin Hopper, proclaims in Old Weird Albion that ‘when we pass by a place, loiter beside it, more so when we live our fiery lives within it, that place retains some trace of our passing’ (Hopper, 2017, p. 56).
How do I connect the reading, the ideas in my head, the traces that have been left before me, the traces that I leave, the journey that I am on of discovery, the outer landscape, the inner landscape, the making and the meaning?
I take risks.
I record what I see on my joruney.
I record what others have left behind on their joureny.
I capture the ghosts of lives lived whilst trying to live my own.
I love these ghostly images, created using Amsterdam acrylic which I thinly applied to a geli plate before briefly laying a photocopied image of one of my photographs of a walk on top. The photocopy is quickly pulled off to reveal these ghostly images, which I then capture on paper. They don’t always work out and I am learning that I need to be light of touch for the best results. I had to watch a lot of videos and invest in new resources to take this risk. I am learning to not be deterred by the ones that ‘don’t work,’ to not be apologetic, to get lost in the flow and enjoy the moments when things surprise and delight me. It’s all part of the journey.
