2021: A Year In Photos
I love looking back on these summaries of my year, which is why I keep doing them: a photo for every month with a handful of words and favourite snippets of culture. 2021 was A Big One; I moved sectors, I moved house, I went back to university, I gained new hobbies, I fell in love in a world-changing way that echoes across the year and all the photos I took of it. And I did take a lot of pictures I am proud of - both personal and professional.
January
A lonely January in Chiswick, scanned with the sprockets.
The worst start to a year I can remember. God it was absolutely dreadful! It’s difficult to comprehend quite how horrendous it was as I end a year of Blessedly Nice Experiences and excited for the possibilities of 2022 - but it was dire, I felt dire. Small comforts were time spent with a local dog (and also cat), finding ways to look at my neighbourhood differently through photographs and long walks, friends on the phone and through the post who were kind and loving and made me feel lucky and less alone. And yet! it was still! awful!
top film: Undine
top book: Shirley Jackson’s short stories
top television: The Wilds
top podcast: Rabbithole from The New York Times
top art: Chila Kumari Singh Burman’s Christmas lights at Tate Britain
February
Polly on their doorstep, a doorstep on which I was served many teas and slices of cake across this period.
Mercifully hope and new beginnings. I finished my vaccination training and revelled in existing in a room full of strangers doing new tasks - the pure novelty of which is hard to comprehend from the end of the year, although will perhaps soon become familiar again. It snowed! I lived in the kitchen. I went for walks and for cycles. I sent off dark room prints, fine art prints, postcards and letters across the world. And spring arrived, which always makes things a bit better.
top film: St Maud
top book: Folk by Zoe Gilbert
top television: The Undoing
top podcast: Resistance from Gimlet Media
March
Behind the scenes at the Puppet Theatre Barge, a space I was thrilled to photograph pro bono because it’s pure magic.
The practical impossibilities of busyness that haunted the start of the year dissipated in a month of change and newness and behind-the-scenes administrative gathering of threads in every arena of life. I finally replaced my camera and did portrait shoots and artist shoots and fashion shoots and theatre shoots, and I cooked and volunteered and flat sat and saw friends and Zoomed with family. (The great privilege of having things to do and being allowed to do them.)
top film: Finding Vivian Maier
top television: The Bridge
top podcast: The Apology Line from Wondery
April
From a perfect weekend in Brighton, the first of myriad perfect weekends in Brighton this year.
Joyous and full: started a new job, signed a lease on a new house, spent beautiful weekends by the sea. There was sun and book club and aperol spritzes and a return to the pub and faces I hadn’t seen without a screen in between for a very long time.
favourite book: A Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux
top film: Soviet made-for-TV Lord of the Rings
top television: Line of Duty Season 6
top podcast: Ear Hustle from Gimlet
top art: Rachel Whiteread at the Gagosian
May
Lux double exposed with gorse on the Seven Sisters cliff walk.
A month of feeling unspeakably moved by huge things and tiny things. I cried in the cinema, I cried after a vaccination shift, I cried through strength of feeling for somebody else, after playing football, during multiple different books, while watching a sunset on a beach, while listening to a voicenote. I laughed so much I cried on more than one occasion. I made some memories that I think will stick with me forever and I shot an absurd amount of film through which to cling onto them. A good life!
top film: shorts by Palestinian women filmmakers, curated by Another Gaze
top book: Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan
top podcast: Kerning Cultures
June
Marching down to the beach for surfing and sunset.
The summer is blessedly hard to remember as I had too nice a time to keep up my monthly summaries. June began in Cornwall in a cloudless week of friends, surfing, walking, cooking, laughing. There was a weekend camping in the Sussex countryside where I saw my first shooting star. An in-person class with Lily after over a year of her kind online encouragement that has finally made art into a Hobby I Do, golden hour football and a return to live performance, art in beautiful settings and digital and analogue portraiture I was proud of.
top book: The Seventh Man, John Berger and Jean Mohr
top theatre: Retrained by In Bed With My Brother at Camden People’s Theatre
top TV: Feel Good Season 2
top art: Lisa Brice at Charleston
July
A perfect afternoon by the sea. There is a perfect afternoon by the sea picture from every month of this year.
Another hazy month spent at various British seasides, on two wheels under summer sun, painting people with England flags (much good it did), and taking rich and varied pictures of faces new and old (and also my football team’s wine-themed kit.)
top film: Jumbo
top book: White is for Witching, by Helen Oyemi
top art: Jennifer Packer at the Serpentine
August
The hunt for the Glasgow Subway Trousers, a deranged quest of a 30th birthday gift that included a zine documenting the process designed by beloved Kia.
I have many beautiful photographs from August but unavoidably must choose one of the project that consumed the majority of my waking hours. How I managed to fit any additional activities alongside that vast undertaking is unclear, but they included a glorious week of remote work and play in Deal from which myriad moments are inked on my memory. Golden hour chat about queer family-making beside my favourite brutalist pier, the most golden Sunday afternoon in the illustrious history of golden Sunday afternoons, sunlight spilt across the floor of an ice-cream parlour, a teenager telling us we were cool as we cycled under a pink sunset. Imagine! There were also two weekends away in Scotland and We Out Here, two of my favourite films of the year at two cherished cinemas, and two visits to Art4Fun.
top film: Jungle Cruise
top art: Emeka Ogboh at Edinburgh’s Burns Monument
top book: The Manningtree Witches, by AK Blakemore
top theatre: Look At Me Don’t Look At Me by RashDash at Paines Plough Roundabout
September
A sunset swim out to the buoy for the first time.
A perfect month, spent mainly with the person who has changed everything this year. We started a project documenting London’s outdoor swimming spaces, cooked a pasta Hardy Tree from scratch and a 10 layer progressive pride flag cake, made cross-city treasure hunts and gifts and dressed up as Jo and Laurie for a party. We went for a sunset swim and a miniature train ride and stumbled across a butterfly house in the middle of East Sussex. Looking back from a rain-lashed Sunday it all feels like a lovely fever dream.
top TV: Vigil
top theatre: Indecent at the Menier Chocolate Factory
October
A dream commission photographing a favourite TikToker for the inside cover of his new book. Elbowing my way into author portraiture has been a big win this year.
One thousand years long - not in a long and painful slog kind of way, but in a bursting at the seams with newness kind of way. Full and fascinating hours across the libraries and classrooms and coffee shops of Bloomsbury for the first weeks of my MSc in Digital Anthropology at UCL. Magic moments in the Yorkshire countryside on a Big Gay Weekend to Hebden Bridge, and my regular Big Gay Weekends in the landscapes and bodies of water of Sussex. Cycling endlessly across the city on my new bike, feeling self-sufficient and independent and only falling off the one time after one too many too strong pints with ex-colleagues. And I did an incredibly fun portrait commission ending in a TikTok takedown to an audience of 1.5 million.
top film: Garage People
top art: Reimagining Spaces at the Barbican
top theatre: Athena at The Yard
November
A welcome and painful taste of travel while in Istanbul with work.
Squeezed in my first real travel of the year, a week in Istanbul for work which I wrote about here - full of tiny teas and the call to prayer and the taste of grilled meats and a different sea’s air. The rest of the month was back-to-school autumn vibes, catching up with friends on the beach and in the pub and over home-cooked meals, crunching leaves beneath my DMs, patting dogs familiar and new, etc etc.
top film: Petite Maman
top book: The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye
top podcast: Sweet Bobby from Tortoise Media
top art: Sarah Morris at the White Cube
top theatre: little scratch at Hampstead Theatre
December
Traditional advent weekend in Oxford, squeezed in before the advent of Omicron.
Started out with the classroom and the office and Christmas dinners and present gathering and general merriment until suddenly everything was plunged back to 2020. For me that meant a week of delightful isolation full of food and film in Brighton, followed by the somewhat less delightful déjà vu foiling of our Christmas plans to reunite with family in the Netherlands. Yes it was painful to have it snatched away at the last moment once more, but I write this from Christmas in a house full of books and food and the fireside and the quiet clatter of canine claws on stone flooring. Lucky me.
At the beginning of 2021 the year ahead felt desolate and difficult, full of uncertainty and challenge. 2022 really could not feel more different. LUCKY ME.
top TV: Anne+
top book: At the Pond: Swimming at the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond
top film: Single All The Way