Before the pandemic took the world by storm, I was self-employed, working as a complementary therapist providing massage, The Bowen Technique and teaching meditation. My life turned on its head as the clinic I used closed, people were unable to attend sessions and it wasn’t long before my business was no longer viable.
Since my life has evolved to be grounded in my meditation practises and spirituality I saw this time as an opportunity to explore new things and to open myself to new opportunities. After all the whole world had hit the pause button so what else was there to do…
I started to immerse myself in my love of photography and delve in deeper to start using it in ways that had never occurred to me before. I started spending every waking hour experimenting with self portraits, doing virtual online photoshoots and exploring what the images were saying to me. However, I found that I couldn’t connect with any of them.
Undeterred, thoughts started to swim around in my mind and led me to look at taking several images and layering them on top of each other, and in the process I created art that I loved. This changed my relationship to photography and how I saw it which brought some exciting realisations and possibilities to me.
I started to relate to people in a different way and wanted to express myself as more than what I look like so I started to play with emotions, memories and things that were personal to me until I created what emerged to be a capturing the spirit of myself. The feeling of me in many different aspects that said more than the literal imagery I had captured previously.
Sometimes I feel and sense sounds, people and music in colours and movement which took on a new life within me and opened up a part of me that I had probably not really engaged with on such a creative level. My images became more abstract and invoked different emotions in me which is what i had always been searching for.
I feel as if I’ve grown personally, and evolved my passion for photography to a new level. It really gave me a sense of purpose and I know that I have become a different person through the process.
Even in our potentially darkest times there is always something we can do to change how we feel, which can lead to opening new pathways and potentially better brighter times ahead.
