From my little directorial experiences in my short life so far, I realised that I tend to welcome contingency like an old friend. I have welcomed it when I was working with performing artists and rode the situational wave of the aleatory for the image's sake.  I like to view such flexibility as a blessing. I don't let my ego throw a scene when things don't go my way. It's all good- even if it involves 'ruining' my precious medium format film.  Although in all fairness, this time round, mia culpa. Mia maxima culpa. 

It started with a thought. A half-sentence, uttered right before I entered the dark room to blindly mount the floppy Medium Format film to develop it. The thought lingered in my mind as I rummaged around and separated the film from its protective paper, and started to grow into anxiety where my numerous attempts to mount it were futile. Still on the memory of the previous week's smooth darkroom experience, where I mounted the film with ease in a span of half a minute, my frustration quickly merged with the thought, and amidst the darkness I could see my anxiety grow bigger and brighter. I suddenly became aware of the stuffiness of the room, and my hummingbird heart rate soared. Aware of the situation, I tried to calm myself down, in the fashion of various Sin City characters when they were in dire straits, but I also realised that I had become too hot and bothered in the tiny dark room to ever manage to mount the film. My hands were shaking and I knew I had to leave that room fast, so in a hurry, I huffed and roughly rolled the film around the reel, stuffed it into the tank, shut it and fled the dark place.

Upon switching on the light I immediately realised what I had done and scolded myself for not doing a better job at calming myself down. The feeling of failure filled me as I regretfully added the developer and agitated the tank. Gone was the usual feeling of excitement. And yet, at the back of my frustrated mind, I remained rather curious as to how the result would be. From the crackling sounds the film made as I 'loaded' it, I knew that the damage would be very very visible and irreversible, but I wondered how this could go with the portraits of Pearlie. The result is as follows, and dareisay, rather Deleuzean in some regards.

I photographed Celia Hay using the Mamiya RZ 67. See more images from this series here.

Taken in the garden of the place I live in within London.

The neighbourhood park.

Jean illustrating everyone's exhaustion after our dreamy 3 days of filming.

Kids in Gozo

Visiting Robert Burns' home in Scotland

A quarry.  One of many.

Dragonara 01/01/15

yikes, the grain kind of happened.