Today I found an old journal dated sometime in 2012 . It states that 10 years ago ( in now time that is 18 years ago) I only had a small box of photos. This was way before digital cameras and digital photography. I had a Ricoh SLR which I bought in the early 1980's for a round world trip , and I played with double exposure where I would wind the spool back on itself and take more photos on top of the images already there. The magic of chance enthralled me and I made some very surreal images. One series was a children's project , where they made 3D sets and scenes from their imagination which I photographed on site, and these were then double exposed onto some landscape photos at a later point. I had no idea what I was double exposing on as I never kept a track of what I had been shooting. I had a beautiful handful of success stories in this box.
Today I have thousands and thousands of images in the box of my Mac. Using various apps on my phone I discovered by chance during those 3 / 4 .am sleepless nights I have found another means of capturing a beautiful accident. I can allow the the app to distort and manipulate an image and then layer with a distortion of another app. There is no way I know how the image is going to play out. Its all down to chance and I save what pleases me . The digital world has become an amazing drawing tool for me and in these days of Covid where I am still somewhat restricted in where I can go, I find a sense of solace in the play and the magic that appears.
However, on reflection, I do wonder if any of these new images really come up to the magic of those photos made so many years ago?