again pete wrote

hi Chi

whoa… where the hell did that week go?

can’t believe I’m sitting here in my studio on another dull sunday again, wondering what happened to the time

well, it was a busy week… being a freelancer, like you, means I am at the mercy of my clients… everybody thinks that I’m lucky because they assume I can choose when I work, when it suits me, but the reverse is actually the truth… I have less opportunity to dictate my schedule than someone who works 9-5 in an office… but I’m not moaning… I love to be busy… to feel a buzz of industry… to exceed peoples expectations… to produce rabbits out of hats… and then to feel listless and empty when the work dies… days of inertia… lots of annoying little chores to do, paperwork piling up, things that need fixing… but fuck that.. I’ll stare out the window at the boats on the river… I’ll daydream… I’ll surf flickr… anything but the boring mundane tasks I should be doing…

so, how was your week… do you have another assignment? what kind of writing do you do?

my mind is still being exercised by your deceptively simple inquiry about inspiration…  and, incredibly, I’m struggling to remember if anybody has asked me that before… plenty of friends and clients ask the usual banal questions… what is your favorite subject matter, who are your favorite photographers, etc., and they are easy to answer… but the inspiration one is different…

for a start, is the inspiration for taking pictures the same as what inspires us to keep living? it should be I guess… I hope it is… and sure, there are some obvious ones… photography, music, art, film… but somehow, those seem to me, to be more influences than inspiration… true inspiration comes from something far more elusive… and often not just one thing… but a combination of events and actions… a coalescence of thoughts and concerns, some old, some new, that finally reach a critical mass and condense into a single force that implants and inhabits your very soul… like when you travel to foreign places and experience an environment and culture different form the one you are so used to at home… everything is noticed… different smells, different customs, different road markings, different attitudes, different body language… and then eventually you absorb all these disparate elements and form a single impression in your mind of what this strange culture is all about.. and you realise that there is a different way of living, of existing and co-existing, of being a community… and that is inspiring… whoa… there you go… my first answer… travel is truly inspiring… I’ll think of others…

btw, your image of the chainlink fence you posted a few days ago… thank you (again)… it triggered a memory and reconciled a struggle I’ve had for years with such fences… I’ve always been intrigued by them, always photographed them but never in a satisfactory way, even at art college I used to make drawings of them and collect any visual reference that featured them… and it has always bemused me as to why I should find them so intriguing, yet get so little out of them as a visual metaphor… until I saw your image… and then I realised what it was… it rekindled a memory of when I was a toddler and my mother took me and my twin sister to kindergarden for the first time… there was a chainlink gate and fence to the playground… and of course, after delivering us safely, my mother had to walk back through the gate, leaving me and my sister on our own in an unfamiliar place… it’s one my earliest memories… I remember my sister being distraught and crying, and I also remember the feel of the wire on my hands as I clasped the fence and watched as my mother walked away… I don’t want to sound dramatic about it, but those things can have a impact on you, and I think that your image finally resolved the conundrum because there is a sense in it (for me at least) of being constrained… being on the inside of the fence, whereas most of the images I’ve made over the years have been from the other side of the fence… the outside… and indeed, I had for a long time thought the pre-occupation to be connected with my feeling of always being an outsider, an observer, excluded and detached.. but really it was all about abandonment and a sense of constraint… powerful stuff this photography business!

well, I guess I should stop rambling now… hope you have a great week…

Pete