I’m continuing a collaborative project with my friend, the wonderful poet, Susan Carter Morgan. We are on the last leg of our year long photo-poetic project, Natural Histories. I’ve held this work closely, choosing not to share as I go, allowing for distance from the work. Time to percolate. Last week, I woke up in the middle of night with a fully formed idea of the structure of our photo book—ideas about how to organize the flow of images and what pictures were still needed. I could see the pages turn in my mind. Try as I might, I could not rest until those thoughts were recorded, the pages re-ordered, notes pasted here and there. Since then I’ve been thinking about the beautiful joy of creative flow. I give in and work through the night, knowing full well that I will need a long nap tomorrow.
How does a project mature?
It is obviously a most mysterious,
imperceptible process.
It carries on independently of ourselves,
in the subconscious,
crystalizing on the walls of the soul.
It is the form of the soul
that makes it unique,
indeed only the soul decides
the hidden 'gestation period' of that image
which cannot be perceived
by the conscious gaze.
—Andrey Tarkovsky, Instant Light