They Say Journaling is Good For Your ‘Mental Health’
2024 - 2025At some point in time, I decided that light is The ethereal witness to our lives. Most living things on Earth owe their life to sunlight and the nourishment it provides us. It transits the sky with grace, into our homes, warms our faces, and is there with us through intimate and banal moments of our lives. Paradoxically, light photons experience neither space nor time —devoid of mass, they traverse space faster than any object in the universe. Transcending the constraints of time as we perceive it, light eternally explores the fabric of existence.
While light itself remains untethered from the passage of time, it becomes the conduit to etch a moment in time; photographers seem to be obsessed with trying to capture the ephemeral. You can't. That's the spoiler. And another conversation for another time.
Lumen printing is a cameraless form of photography. By exposing photographic paper to sunlight, a moment becomes a physical object. Light initiates a chemical reaction that immortalises a brief dance between matter and time.
I decided not to document the physical moment; too easy. I documented the light, or the light adjacent to the moment. Because it turns out I have ADHD, which explains why at nearly 40, I can't 'get my shit together' or execute a project (that I made up) in the way I intended. Right now, I am literally writing this, making dinner and watching The Office at the same time. It's the only way to get this shit into print. Hey, maybe light is my 'special interest?' That would explain a lot. This is a genuine breakthrough moment for me. Maybe this is why they say journaling is good for your mental health.
