paying attention

I've been trying to explain what photography means to me for a long time - and mostly failing - until I realised it's simply a way of documenting what draws my attention. It's not just sweeping landscapes, exotic wildlife but also ephemeral moments during everyday life. More importantly, when I photograph what holds my attention, I am photographing what I love. As Mary Oliver puts it, "Attention is the beginning of devotion."

However, in this era of late stage capitalism, we have internalised a need for hyper efficiency, constantly attempting to multitask to increase our productivity not only at work but also during rest in a bid to somehow optimise life. Paradoxically it is also an era of incessant distractions. Even if we don't know it consciously, we instinctively feel how the attention economy is taking over our lives - it is almost impossible to stop and pay attention to our surroundings, to our own body, our thoughts and feelings. We are always in a state of dissociation, divorced from our present - thinking planning scrolling, our mind and eyes are never still.

Yet we humans are curious beings by nature, and until recently all that curiosity was satisfied by the world outside the phones in our hands. It can be like that again. When we engage with the world with curiosity, with openness, without hurry - we notice a lot more and in doing so, we ground ourselves in the present and resist the attention economy.

So I would like to leave you with a gentle question - what do you pay attention to? Spend the day just noticing what holds your attention,

then stop and look a little closer.