Photography – Catalogue

The thing I love most about the creative process is the way unexpected connections are made. And even if my blog photography doesn’t constitute high art, there is an art to capturing photographs that express the tone and feeling of what it is you’re trying to say.

It recently came to me that, to date, I have taken all but one of the photos for this blog at three of my favourite cafes.

In choosing these locations, I was looking for the magical quality of light that fills those large cafe windows, and the textured surfaces and tables that work so well in the background.

I was also seeking places that were familiar to me, where I would find a sense of quiet and calm.

“I began looking for what I had to say where I usually find it: in what William Carlos Williams called ‘the local,’” writes acclaimed photographer Sally Mann in her memoir, Hold Still.

And to describe what he meant by “the local,” poet William Carlos Williams wrote, “I was determined to use the material I knew.”

What Williams termed “the local,” Mann calls “the everyday and ordinary.” Both are speaking of an approach to the creative process in which the scenes and objects of day-to-day life inform the artist’s work through a practice of close and careful attention.

Of the photographs that follow, the “window shots” of the cafes I visited were taken long before I began writing this blog. I was well acquainted with the light and ambience of each location, so I happily made use of the material I knew.