On The Road with Vicky Lamburn

I haven’t written anything since I got back about my sojourn across the North Downs, a 132 mile hike from Farnham in Surrey to Dover in Kent via Rochester and Canterbury. The biggest reason as it stands has been my:

• Very busy couple of weeks since I got back
• The depressing fact that a year on I have still to pull my finger out and finish writing about the South Downs Way which I did almost a year ago now.

But there have been other reasons. When I started the South Downs Way I knew and still will produce a photo book on the South Downs Way but the flaw was trying to shoot it all in ‘one-sitting’ and whilst this is true to the journey, it has produced some of my favourite photos but also some that I am less than enamoured with. The upshot is that I’m going to need to re-visit the trail and photograph it again. Not exactly a bad thing in my book! So this project whilst very much swept aside for me to get on with impression:mk is alive and I am sticking with it. I just have to get these things right and there is no need to rush (unless of course I die tomorrow in which case i need to get a shift on!)

The other reason is a biggie, but that hasn’t stopped me getting on with it in the same way that say my birthday, barbeques, the pub (a few times admittedly!) and doing some extra work outside of the day job has done. But it has made me stop writing about it in yet another diary like fashion. Why?

I have long shrugged off or indeed acknowledged/struggled to find that any work of mine (photographically or written) has a philosophy, there is one but it’s not exactly obvious and probably still isn’t to me. But I do know what I am interested in and I’m now old enough to not give a damn about whether people think it’s odd, weird, deranged or obsessive. Which is a good start because there is nothing wrong than wanting to say photograph in black and white maybe the underside and underbelly of industrial Birmingham with its urban motorways and canals and decayed industry and social housing but not being able to do so because you’re worried a friend or all your friends are going to look dimly on it. Now, the latter is also something I will do (when I get time) but I’ve completely got over the whole keeping up appearances for friends, I am what I am and if you don’t like it do yourself and me a favour and kindly show yourself the door darling.

But behind this in the things I have attempted to write, and the things I do photograph of my own volition have been informed by something, or a series of somethings that are never entirely in isolation but do quite often float in the ether encapsulated all by themselves. Quite often these things are entirely subjective, subvocal, hidden and emotional and its hard to explain them except through a photo, or a sentence/paragraph that forms part of that overall patchwork of experience which describes where I am at this time, and what has gone before to bring me here in this frame of mind.

Without drifting needlessly into the obtuse, walking has always given me the freedom to think clearly. Whether that’s drifting around London or Brighton, or out in the wilds of the Downs or indeed the North Downs it hasn’t really mattered. The car, and to a lesser extent the train give you a sense of movement and an interesting perspective on how the landscape and your viewpoint shifts with that movement, but it’s nothing like the view you get when walking, which awakens and feeds that curious appetite. The bus for me does none of these, there’s no romance or emotion in that transport. It’s as utilitarian as a girdle (unless you have a girdle fetish, not that I am suggesting bus buffs are… Someone help me out of this hole!)

Walking this time seemed to sew up some kind of philosophy, it’s very quirky but it makes some sense. And so rather than write just a series of daily diaries of each day on the North Downs Way I’ve decided to work it into a wider remit on photography, subjectivity and philosophy of an art form and indeed maybe even a little of life. It’s hard to explain succinctly otherwise there would be no point in writing a book but it’s non-fiction and most definitely not a Kerouac-inspired journey dialogue. It is really a photography book, it might not be “Mastering Photoshop CS4’ or ‘The Dummies guide to Digital SLRs’ (I have no idea if those books exist but I bet they do, and I bet they are really really boring, bit like what I write then *chuckles*) but it’ll be interesting none the less.

The photo that summed this up for me is one I am still waiting back for, but maybe that’s it, a photo can make sense even with it not present if the thought behind it is sound. I was sat at Gatwick Airport station, on the final leg back home to Worthing, Day 14 of walking and I had done it, I had walked every inch from Farnham to Dover. And I was sat on the floor of the platform in the sun, it was nice to stretch out the legs but you get interesting perspectives on different levels. Ahead a lady, perhaps a flight attendant still dressed up glamorous strolled down the platform towards the incoming train and ahead a train was moving north to the far-side platform, the sun was bright. And it was hot (never start a sentence with a conjunction – except when it works for effect.) Long shadows carrying the cerebral and emotional baggage we all hide following in tow and the sky was pitch perfect blue. The departure board scrolling across for the Brighton 1842 or something like that fringed by its bright yellow metal armature which burst out uncontrollably against the navy skirt-suit of the what I have now decided is most certain an air-hostess. And in that pitch perfect blue sky a plane is coming into land taking people back from their escape, and the train is here to carry some away too on a hot Sunday noon. Why and what is all this for, each little step and snatched glance, with every uttered word what are we doing it for. Are we always In Search of Sunrise?

And photo sums it up for me what this book is about and that’s the book concept/title too, In Search of Sunrise. It’s a quirky idea but it makes sense. It’ll be a good antidote to ‘1001 Digital Photography and Adobe Lightroom Skills: The Ultimate Guide to everything.’

I have been watching Sugar Rush again the past few days. Whilst the second series got a little bit sillier in parts (it was still good) – some of the dialogue in the first series was spot on; not just from the perspective of it being a coming out story for a young lesbian, but for life and dare I say love (though infatuation is probably closer.)

One of the aspects that always hooks me by the lip is the words in in episode 7 (if I can count) is the sentiment that once a special moment has gone, it was as good as things would ever get; and you want it to on forever, and moreover you want everyone to know – but that sometimes isn’t possible. Whilst that might sound like a disturbing sorrowful thought, it’s actually quite positive in a way that isn’t it just a wonderful feeling when you have something so wonderful happen to you that you just feel this bursting brimful urge to tell everybody about it there and then.

I was just thinking, that probably never goes away – somewhat like your first crush, the world becomes this vibrant, over saturated universe from what was a slightly quirky, grey, indeterminate place. At least I hope it never goes away. I can see why perhaps those who are older seem so much more frustrated by life and at least in the UK.

The past couple of years have been interesting (in fact the past decade has been somewhat interesting really) – I’m finding that hard to express right now; but I’ll find the words soon I’m sure.

I guess I just had a little Zen moment (as clichéd and trite as that now sounds) on the beach earlier on today. It was just peaceful listening to the tide in the distance and the seagulls cawwing in the distance, watching the sun set after I had watched it rise and set on Saturday too, and the world felt a good place. A vibrant universe, over saturated and endowed in silly bright poster paint.

And whilst Robert Peston and the media will have us all believe we’re all going to the dogs, there is some good things still around. And I’m not being harsh or unsympathetic to those being directly affected by the loss of their jobs – I have seen what that does first hand with my own family (in the late 80s and early 90s) – I just feel that you have to at least avert your attention from all this gory badness once in a while, release the pressure almost. Take a walk, take a drive in the car at an ungodly hour, it’s soothing.

It was utterly beautiful to drive down Grand Avenue on Saturday morning at half 5, no cars but mine, window wound right down, a gentle hum of the engine and birds twittering in the Scots Pines, and that wonderful icy fresh air whistling by… I just had to tell you about that, of course…

After all, the last time I was made redundant (in 2005) I decided one day I had enough of endless forms and the depressing state of affairs of having to sign on; so I went for a drive to Bodiam Castle. And when I got there I didn’t want to go back so I went to Rye. And when I got there I didn’t want to go back so I went to Ashford. And then up the M20 to the M25. And even when on the M23 I decided to dive off into Crawley and out the other side before getting back… It’s just good to get away from it all and then tell someone about it. The world can be an enriching place, even with its ever incessant march of retail parks, motorways and suburbia enveloping you all around…

This film ever since I first watched it in Media Studies in 1999 at the lovely endearing age of 16 means more to me day by day by day…

Memoirs of a Time

These photos have been ‘recaptured’ using my SE K800i but were originally taken using my Canon EOS-5 with my 28-135mm Sigma lens. I am hoping to get them scanned in properly soon but laying them on the floor and arranging them into some kind of story and capturing it on my mobile phone was pretty cool as well. They were originally taken using Fujifilm Neopan 400CN C41 process film and the results were fantastic.

These photos were taken at the Black Rabbit, Arundel, W. Sussex in April 2007.

Zombie

Another head hangs lowly,
Child is slowly taken.
And the violence caused such silence,
Who are we mistaken?

“Zombie” — The Cranberries

On the way back from London taking a look out to the desolate Sussex countryside at night, eyes weary and brain working through its avenues of moonlight and cyclic thoughts of representation, semantics of the world and how this all figures with everything... A rare photo of myself up close that I like.