Nuthin'

in my head at all...at least as far making photographs is concerned. I'm thinking over where I have gotten to with the project that ought to be the bedrock of the final submission in May but it's hard to see a way forward with it that doesn't seem cliched or trite. I am also finding that much of what is written about other photographer's work seems to share a sense of hollowness in terms of what the actual images convey and the theoretical constructs around them. In short many of the pictures are banal and the theorising bullshit!

And yet without a strong theoretical underpinning even the strongest pictures seem to me to lack a real presence. I'm beginning to doubt my own judgment in all this and to question quite rigorously even those photographs and photographers that I've previously admired. Having spent a goodly part of the day rendering in paint several images that could have been almost instantaneously arrived at digitally the pure pleasure of the physicality of the act of painting and the sensuousness that derives from this is what genuinely moves and motivates me most of the time.

However the commitment to the process of better understanding the photographic act is what motivated me to take this course of study and it remains elusive. It's certain that making more images, probably thinking less about how and what they might be, and looking harder at the results is at the very least a prerequisite to understanding better. So over the next few days I shall re-double my efforts to get out and take pictures rather than agonising over what the course of action ought to be.