My good friends the Roberts sisters reminded me of the intensely important powerhouse of creativity to be found in wives and mothers in their late 40’s and early 50s. The children are spreading their wings, and for those with a career either on hold or part time, (sometimes lost by stealth, as Jess put it), moments of choice come before us. Decisions need to be made about how we are going to productively spend the next thirty years. Decisions that have the inner monkey vocal with imposter syndrome, anxious about starting again in our fifties, fearful of both being judged and being too late to the party.
These are real fears. I write from experience. Talking to my peers, those of us with less than glittering careers find it difficult to believe in ourselves.
This last two years I’ve been telling the world I’m a fine art photographer. This gives my inner monkey a name, something concrete to hang into. The spoken working title, a purpose to how I spend my time and how I identify. An artisanal photographer, as Jess coined it. I like these definitions.
Moosing about the internet I read this on ‘Salt in the age of the pixel’ by Marc Feustel on the Tate.org. Which, btw, is crap for those of us wearing reading glasses where the Tate.org logo is all cool and blurry . A bit of a finger up to those of us struggling to read small phone font on a good day. However.
‘The American artist Dan Estabrook is one of the foremost users of the salted paper print process today. For Estabrook, ‘Every handmade photograph is like a drawing or painting, or even a sculpture. It is an object first and foremost, with weight and form, not just a window into another world or another time.’
The salt printing process can make use of salt found locally. My artisanal photography takes a leaf from analogue photography but leans in on organic chemistry from coffee, developing 120mm film in agreeable kitchen chemistry, then uses these negs to contact print images onto salt prints made with local salts. Found in the sea and concentrated by boiling, the image is made of and by and with. Fellow photographers such as Brandt have forged the path in his Lakes and Reservoirs Work, supported by previous work by those in the alt photo world where Tokyo Bay Water salt print recipes were shared. The artisanal photographic world is one of disseminaters and sharers. The digital collision of salt print with pixels gives a massive canvas where I can twist the digital story with the truth of the analogue print.
Inner monkeys are being given artisanal, inky truths for ammunition. We can believe in mid-life creativity. The wives and mothers will find ways to release their inner monkey, as my great friend Kim once said.