Who am I and what am I doing here? Questions that I’ve been asking myself ever since I can remember, but here, at least, there’s a specific context in which to ask them. This is my critical reflective journal (CRJ), created to accompany a Masters in Photography taken with Falmouth University. Arendt talked of thinking without a bannister in circumstances where there’s nothing to hold on to and I guess this CRJ is going to be just that kind of thinking.

Already I’m confused. But it’s a Buddhist saying that wisdom arises from confusion, so maybe confused is a good thing, at least for the time being. Right off the back of a Film & TV Masters at Bristol, I came to learn that my filmmaking is very photographic, but now I need to consider to what extent my photography is filmic. And what role all the other bits and pieces of intellectual and creative experiments – haiku, childrens fiction, psychology, literary essays, geography – are now going to take in this new context. Even – maybe especially – a long-ago and fleeting flirtation with psychedelics, which somehow set the stage for what my photography has evolved into.

I’m also a bit nervous. I’m a lover of art and indebted to Matisse, Brancusi, Kurt Jackson, Georgia O’Keefe, Miro, Warhol, Hiroshige. But my background is in narrative and photography’s connectedness with fine art makes me feels like I’ve just arrived in a part of the world where English is spoken but in a dialect I’m struggling to adjust to. But maybe nervous is good too. Nervous keeps me alert, questioning and active.

The big questions I’m going to be considering here, I guess, are these:

1. Given my interdisciplinary background – where does photography sit and how can I create a medium drawing on my broad background?

2. Is there in my photography (and filmmaking) something that suggests a personal style? If so, how do I refine and develop it and to what else does it relate?

3. How can I use both 1 and 2 to continue to explore the themes of place-attachment, wellbeing and eco-politics explored in my previous work?

4. How might 1, 2 and 3 be of interest to others, and what means are available to reach them?

Hopefully, by August 2021, I’ll have come at least some of the way towards answering them.