I usually have a word of intention each year. 2020 took a lot out of me and I knew 2021 would be a year of change—I would finish my university degree, among other things. So I chose the word perspective. As the year went on, I returned to a phrase that I have on a bracelet that I wear always—be still and know.
In fact, I really felt this year that I was able to protect my solitude, partially because of lockdowns. But even with all that time, and I spent a lot of that time reading and writing and thinking, I found I didn’t have a lot of time for my photography.
After last year’s intense creativity with #isolationcreation, I had some new projects I wanted to focus on and found I was not as inspired as previously, nor did I have as much time. As I finished uni, I completed a three-month internship, then immediately started practical legal training and a three-month placement.
In the lazy days between Christmas and New Year, I have been rereading Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, which I reread every year. I was reminded of two things; first, that art springs from necessity, and second, that we must hold to what is difficult and not what is easiest.
Our modern world, and the algorithms that make it move, requires us to be in a permanent state of production, excavating ourselves to the point where we almost know too much about each other.
Instead, I know that my art is a cumulative expression of many things within me, because I have spent time with myself, because I am searching for what is within me. And because I have been so moved by art this year: Rilke, of course, but also Stephen Sondheim, Adele, Joan Didion, bell hooks, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Francesca Woodman, Dhambit Mununggurr, Anna Atkins, Vivian Maier, Nan Goldin, Tina Modotti, Kunié Sugiura, Shirin Neshat…the list goes on.
In that vein, I have no idea and no promises for the new year. For the first time in my life, I have no real expectations of what the new year holds, and it is both liberating and uncomfortable. I do know that I want to follow the path that leads me to know that what I am doing every day is meaningful and fulfilling, whatever that is.
In any case, I do know that I will continue to, as Rilke puts it, live the questions, even if I don’t know the answers. And I will protect my solitude, always, because it is how I live and it is what feeds my soul.
