It’s been several weeks since I last lifted my camera and stepped out into the world, seeking that fleeting convergence of instinct, light, and subject that might offer something worth holding onto. The days since have carried a quiet weight. Not dramatic, not despairing, but a low, persistent thrum of guilt that catches at the edge of each afternoon. I’ve found myself stealing glances at my camera bag in the corner, as if it were a dog left waiting by the door, its lead untouched. In those moments, the accusations came too easily, you’re a photographer, aren’t you? Then why aren’t you photographing? Why aren’t you doing the thing you supposedly love?

Love is not always loud. Over the past fortnight, as I’ve buried myself in photobooks and flicked through the pages of magazines like Hotshoe and Black & White Photography, a different truth has begun to take shape. It did not arrive with a flourish or a eureka. It came in fragments, in the quiet rustle of paper, in the slow turning of a page, in the long stare at a photograph that somehow seems to speak more clearly than the mirror. I’ve realised that being a photographer is not limited to the act of clicking the shutter. It is about remaining open, remaining curious, remaining attuned to the world even when the camera stays zipped away. The work, I’ve come to see, never truly stops, it transforms.

That realisation did not come from a void. It emerged in tandem with the painstaking edits I’ve been making on my “Echoes of the Past” project. These are spaces thick with stories, where decay and memory hold hands in the damp air. For weeks, I berated myself for not photographing, yet I had not stopped the work. Not truly. I had been refining, re-evaluating, living with the pictures I’d already made and trying to translate what I felt into tone and shape. The camera may have been still, but my relationship with the work was far from dormant.

Photobooks have always had the ability to recentre me. Riverland, published by Stanley/Barker, is one I read. There is an image that stays with me, a handful of rocks perched on a larger boulder beneath overhanging branches by the river. The stillness of the water offers a mirror to the scene above, but also a window into what lies beneath, stone steps submerged, softened by the flow of time. It is an image that speaks of permanence and erosion, of presence and disappearance. It echoes the same tension I feel when walking through a graveyard, trying to preserve something invisible, a theme I constantly grapple with in my “Echoes of the Past” project.

Then there is Ray’s a Laugh. I avoided it for years, an oversight I’ve come to own, but when I finally surrendered to it, I found myself stopped cold by a particular image, Liz, wrapped in a blue coat, stands over Ray in a living room that feels oppressively familiar. Her body leans toward the door, a scene of half-argument, half-exit, while Ray sits on the sofa beneath her gaze, stuck in that mute moment between reply and regret. It does not solely freeze time, it provokes it. You can almost hear the words hanging in the air. This is not documentation, it is theatre without resolution. It is all tension and tenderness; the kind of emotional honesty that makes your gut tighten. These photographs do not merely show, they provoke, leaving gaps for you to fill in with your own assumptions, your own projections.

There is something deeply physical about great photobooks. The way a silk-screened cover drags against your fingertips. The smell of fresh ink. The quiet shift of weight as you turn each page. Publishers like Stanley/Barker understand this. Their books do not merely present photography, they embody it. Every design choice is deliberate, every sequence part of the artist’s argument. The object becomes part of the experience, and in doing so, the reader is pulled deeper into the photographer’s headspace. That tangibility has saved me these past few weeks. When the camera would not speak, the books did, loudly.

Hotshoe has also been a great new find. Flicking through its pages, I am struck by the diversity of voices, the sheer range of ways to approach this medium. Have I been too focused on the what of my images, rather than the why? It has prompted me to revisit my own contact sheets, to look not solely for the “best” shots, but also for those that carry the most emotional weight, the ones that say something about the world I’m trying to evoke.

This, I’ve come to understand, is the heart of being a photographer, the constant interplay between inspiration and creation, between absorbing the work of others and refining your own. It is not solely about the moments when you’re out in the world, camera in hand, chasing light. It is about the hours spent reading, thinking, editing, questioning. It is about the way a single image in a photobook can send you down a rabbit hole of memory or spark a new idea for your own work. It is about the courage to sit with your own uncertainties, to admit that you’re still searching for the right way to tell your story.

I think back to a moment a few weeks ago, when I was flipping through Tulsa by Larry Clark again. I’d read it first around 30 years ago, and back then, it felt like a revelation, raw, unfiltered, a window into a world I could scarcely imagine. This time, a different impact registered. An image of a young man, shirtless, sitting on a bed with a syringe in his hand, his expression vacant yet heavy with something unspoken. When I first saw it, I was electrified by its boldness. A pang of melancholy now arises in me, a recognition of the fragility Clark was capturing. My own project, with its focus on memory and place, feels worlds apart from Clark’s, and that image still prompted me to think about the stories we carry, the ones we do not always see until years later. It has pushed me to dig deeper into my own work, to ask what I’m truly trying to say about those summers, about the way they shaped me.

This period of stillness, which I once feared was creative paralysis, has paradoxically been one of the most fertile I’ve known. It has taught me that inspiration is not a finite resource, something you exhaust by not picking up your camera. It is a living thing, fed by the books you read, the conversations you have, the quiet moments when you’re wrestling with a single image in post-production. It is in the way a photobook can make you feel seen, or the way a magazine article can challenge you to rethink your approach. It is in the realisation that being a photographer is not solely about taking pictures, it is about living with an open heart, a curious mind, and a willingness to keep searching, even when the camera stays in its bag.

Perhaps most importantly, it is about time. The time you spend looking without photographing. The time it takes for an idea to mature, for a feeling to become a frame. The time you give yourself to rest, to refill, to remember why you began. It is about recognising that being a photographer does not begin or end with a shutter click. It is a way of being in the world, a way of noticing, reflecting, feeling, a way of listening to what the light is saying even when you’re not capturing it.

As I sit here now, my laptop screen glowing with the soft blues and greens of a landscape I shot months ago, I feel a quiet excitement. The image is not perfect, indeed, it is far from it, but it is starting to feel right, like it is inching closer to the memory I’m trying to hold onto. I think of Billingham’s cluttered living room, Southam’s twilight river, Winship’s defiant girl, Clark’s haunted youth. They are all with me, in a way, as I work. They remind me that photography is a conversation, not solely with the world but with yourself. Sometimes, the most important part of that conversation happens in the silence, in the spaces between the shots.

So, to anyone out there beating themselves up for not shooting enough, for not being “productive” enough, give yourself grace. The work is happening, even when you cannot see it. It is in the books you read, the images you linger over, the questions you ask yourself in the quiet of your studio. Being a photographer is not solely about taking pictures. It is about staying alive to the world, in all its messy, beautiful complexity. That, I’m learning, is more than enough.

Regards

Alex