Solo Acts

October 29, 2020 Len Metcalf

Do you ever get one of those Lone Ranger photographs? One that perhaps you fluked or didn’t think at the time it was worth repeating?

Solo Acts.

One hit wonders.

I do.

All the time…

I will have to go through my work to count how often they happen. I do know the incidence of them is higher the more experimental I am.

I think I need to do a book of them because so often they stand alone. It might have to be one page at a time. One photograph and one double page spread.

I think I need to group them together in a set on my website. My new website is almost ready to share with you. But that’s for a different post.

Solo acts? I am thinking about this as I so often I love creating diptychs. It saddens me a little that I didn’t do more at the time. To create buddies for them. That I missed their beauty at the time of capture. Too often we are focused on that idea of just one image.

I think it’s one of photography’s little sad moments. A sigh of sadness. Perhaps it’s a little death. Ecstasy in the beauty of what you have created, then that moment of reality when you realise it’s the only one.

‘Len, what are you thinking? You have got a great artwork. Be happy with that. No need for sadness.’ I can hear myself telling myself over and over. But it still doesn’t extinguish that little feeling.

It’s because I put so much energy into creating meaningful bodies of work. Who wants to be a one hit wonder? No. I work on bodies of work. Series’s.

I realise that here I tend to show only one don’t I. Well, that’s about to change. This format is getting a little tired and Clair and I are working on its replacement. Len’s Journal.

More about Len’s Journal to come.

Mangrove delights. Anissa showed me how beautiful their flowers smell here. Stunning. If you find a mangrove in flower make sure you stop to smell it’s beauty.