Today I found an old journal dated  sometime in 2012 . It states that 10 years ago ( in now time  that is 18 years ago) I only had a small box of photos. This was way before digital cameras and digital photography. I had a Ricoh SLR which I  bought in the early  1980's for a  round world trip , and I played with double exposure where I would wind the spool back on itself and take more photos on top of the images already there.  The  magic of chance enthralled me and I made some very surreal images. One series was a children's project , where they made  3D sets and scenes from their imagination which I photographed on site, and these were then double exposed onto some landscape photos at a later point. I had no idea what I was double exposing on as I never kept a track of what I had been  shooting.  I had a beautiful handful of success stories in this box.

Today I have thousands and thousands of images in the box of my Mac. Using various apps on my phone I  discovered by chance during those 3 / 4 .am sleepless nights I have found another means of capturing a beautiful accident. I can allow the the app to distort and manipulate an image and then layer with a  distortion of another app. There is no way I know how the image is going to play out. Its all down to chance and I save what pleases me . The digital world has become an amazing drawing tool for me and in these days of Covid where I am still somewhat restricted in where I can go, I find a sense of solace in the play and the magic that appears.

However, on reflection, I do wonder if any of these  new images really come up to the magic of those photos  made so many years ago? 

I have always been blessed to be able to create in different dimensions . I am consistently curious about the world and my place in it. Lockdown has shifted my focus on the space in my immediate environment which mean the roads and lanes I walk in these days, and the caravan I have made a permanent place to reside.  This has meant I have lost my studio and those large walls where I could draw with abandon. The camera which I have always loved has become more of a pencil and a drawing medium and through this I have explored imagery through a reflective process both literally and metaphorically . I take solace in nature during these challenging times - Its constancy, resilience  and sense of its ability to renew / redraw itself gives me much hope. Because photography has taken a bit of a hold these last few months  and in this time I have gone through at my huge catalogue of photographs over recent years and  decided to create a website specifically for this medium. Please give yourself some moments to take a look :  https://www.suzannareynolds.com/

........you know the need for place of solitude to get the head into gear to create ... much of the time is in the preparation ... I have my studio time and Its a transitional time  .... Huge drawings are quite draining even in their exposure - I guess the intricacies of the human condition and archetypes forming in themselves ...weird surreal divergences..... untimely dense compositions. . ..I have had many studios,  tiny and huge. eccentric places, freezing in the winter and boiling in the summer....constantly sweeping up flies and sometimes dead birds. I remonstrate a lot but love it . Its through solitude - and creativity where there is  much to learn from entering pits of being  and somehow finding there is a new place of beauty beyond .......this meandering in my day,  I will go with more depth later re the next drawing..which is finding its way through formlessness .My fingernails a denser shade of pigment dust .