What I found particularly interesting about these images, spread across the sitting room floor, was how differently I’d remembered them. I’d got it into my head that they were some of my better work, that my eye had dulled over the years.

A few things stood out:

- It turns out I’ve become a bit more subtle in my choice of subject as the years have rolled on. A relief for all!

- Technically I’m much better. Some of those old prints are filthy from dust-marked negatives, and I wonder now how I ever considered them acceptable.

- My work feels a little more substantial nowadays – I try to think a bit more about what I’m doing, consider whether images might gather into groups, think about context and underlying themes and I try not to work in so much of a vacuum.

It’s an interesting moment to be reflecting, as it seems that things are moving on for me photographically in a way they hadn’t in years. I think I’m a slow developer (if you’ll pardon the pun). I’ve recently started a business, and was surprised by how many people assumed it would have a photographic bent. It doesn’t, as it happens, as I seem to remain as resolutely noncommercial in my focus as ever, choosing instead to hunt down those still, quiet moments half-hidden from view.

Sometimes it takes a backward glance to be able to move forwards. I wonder what I might say in another fifteen or sixteen years – I’ll be fifty by then so it’s as good a milestone as any.

It’s great to be showing this work in public for the first time – I’m busy sorting out prints at the moment and seeing the work that bit bigger is always a treat. Funny to be finally exhibiting in Huddersfield after living there for so long and hiding my photography under that proverbial bushel, mind…

There’s an article about the exhibition from the Huddersfield Examiner here: Huddersfield Coffee Shop hosts Clare Danek’s Photographs

It’s been possibly my biggest year so far, photographically speaking -  I pushed myself out of my comfort zone to explore new subject areas and disciplines, notably portraiture; one result of this was the ‘On Silence‘ work I did with Tor Bruce back in February, which I exhibited as part of the Look2011 photography festival in Liverpool, then again in London for Photomonth 2011.

I’ve also learnt a lot about what I might be capable of in the darkroom, but a house move late in the year means that my darkroom equipment is currently packed away so my explorations have been paused.

Plans for 2012?

• Get the darkroom up and running again!
• Explore the wetplate collodion process – John Brewer is a master at this and he runs workshops…
• Explore cyanotype methods.
• Improve my quality control in processing – this can always get better!
• Take a bookbinding course – Deborah Parkin, who does a lot of wetplate work, has been talking photobooks a lot on her blog and I’m inspired and intrigued by this format.
• More exploration of the ‘silence’ theme that I started to investigate in 2011.

I’ve got an exhibition lined up in Huddersfield for the end of February, showing some work from the ‘Forgotten Triumphs‘ series, but I think the rest of the year will be dedicated to developing new work and new skills.

Happy photographing in 2012!

No matter, though, because the Control exhibition, ready-prepared from its Liverpool outing, has gone to London to show as part of the Photomonth photography festival taking place across East London. We’re showing at Oxford House, a mixed-use art space in Bethnal Green, and it’s great to see the work against white walls after the more gritty backdrop to the Liverpool show.

Thursday night was private view night – it went really well, sweetened for me by the presence of Tor Bruce, the subject of my On Silence series. He was ‘in silence’ for much of his time at the event, which proved surprisingly challenging for some people, who weren’t sure whether they could talk to him – I found it interesting that a voluntary silence could be perceived as a barrier by others.

The show runs between Monday 3rd Oct and Saturday 29 Oct (opening times and details here). My fellow group member Petra Stridfeldt has featured some images from the show and the private view on her blog.

* * * * * * * * * *

I’m starting to explore other silent people and communities, and have spent some time with local Quaker groups looking at their shared silences. I’m also trying to track down a Buddhist monk who undertook a four year vow of silence, but unfortunately it turns out he enjoyed it so much he’s gone back out to a remote Scottish island for another four year block.

Some of the changes happening in my own life at the moment should mean more space for contemplation, and progression of this investigation – and more space for photography!

Control was a show I collaborated on with nine other photographers from the North of England. It ran for three weeks as part of the Look2011 photography festival in Liverpool, which runs until the end of June 2011.

My day job involves some event management and exhibition organisation for artists, but in that role I’m very much just the facilitator: I do all the work to make it happen and then I fade into the background. This time, though, it’s been about the whole team pulling together to deliver the project, and the whole team taking the praise.

Hearing about the trials and tribulations of some of the other groups working under the Redeye Lightbox scheme, it quickly became apparent that our group were working very well together – the occasional cooler email was as far as we fell out during the eight months leading up to the show.

One feeling that everyone seemed to share was that because sorting out our venue (a found space near the NOVAS centre) took so long, the process became much more about exhibition management than about our individual projects and how they worked together. The photography felt, at points, like an afterthought.

We’ll be taking the show, in a slightly stripped-down form, to London for PhotoMonth this autumn, which means the work gets more exposure as part of a more well-established event, so we’re starting the preparations for that, and in the mean time I plan to spend more time exploring my theme of silence as a form of control.

It feels as if I’ve taken that first step, and found the path to be less the quicksand that I’d convinced myself of, and more firm ground. I feel like a contender again.

He’s lived on the farm since he was a child, and he can tell you stories about when the army came to camp in the field to train for the second world war, and the bomb that missed the house by metres. He can tell you about his father’s fate in the duckpond.

He can also tell you about the hundred or so vehicles scattered across the land, all sinking in and fading away. The oldest dates from 1932, and is nothing but axles now – as much a scant skeleton as we may become, if left. The Environmental Health are always on at him to clear up, but where would he begin?

Since reading Sara Maitland’s ‘A Book of Silence’ I’d become interested in people who’d taken vows of silence, or for whom silence was a significant part of their lives. I was particularly interested in silence in relation to control – the motivations people might have for becoming silent, whether that was voluntary or imposed, in search of freedom or as a result of oppression, for political, spiritual, artistic or simply personal reasons.

The images are also a response to thinking about silence within images. I had been reading about Gerry Badger’s thoughts on ‘quiet photographs’, and I wasn’t thinking of quietness in the way he describes, of authorial neutrality; rather, I was aiming to create a sort of calmness within the image.

These images are a starting point for a further exploration of silence.

This project was developed as part of the Redeye Lightbox scheme and was first exhibited as part of a group show, ‘Control’, which formed part of the look2011 photography festival in Liverpool in May-June 2011.

I’ve made a start on gathering images for the exhibition, which is hugely exciting but a massive step outside my comfort zone – I’m working on a series of portraits, which historically has been an area that I’ve been very shy of pursuing. Pushing past the shyness is proving to be a challenge – even if, as it turns out, it’s also a liberation.
Talking about portrait projects with people has led to some new opportunities emerging, both for subjects and for exhibition potential. In short, things are moving in the right direction.

However, I think I’m about to miss a group meeting and what’s surprised me most about the process is a need I’ve found in myself for feedback from the group, which is combining with a terror not felt since art school crits. I’ve been photographing for fifteen years or so, but a lot of that time has been spent in solitude, with my only feedback mechanism the inevitable platitudes of Flickr contacts.

I’ve been trying to imagine what it would be like to fling one’s work at the world with casual assurance. It hasn’t escaped me that a little less thinking and a little more doing might not go amiss…

And, needless to say, I’ll be updating the website to reflect new work and new directions – probably over the next month or so.