2023: a year in photos
Each December I weave together my favourite pictures and cultural experiences and reflections month by month, mapping the shape of the year over the top of the last. Sometimes this feels easy and the narrative feels straightforward, and other times less so.
2023 has been full and varied, in many respects the third in a trilogy of good years for me. I’ve travelled to new countries for work and play, undertaken interesting fieldwork, got a job I’ve wanted for a long time and realized long-term goals. And though this is also a sanitized version of a hard year, as all things I put onto the internet are, it’s the final few months of 2023 that have made looking back as if through a glass darkly. I have no neat way to summarize or draw out meaning from this year. The clarity I see in my 2022 round-up is absent and the trajectory knotted by the end. But recording is remembering, and I have done my best.
NB: I collect up Instagram and Twitter links across these annual summaries, but my social media accounts are private these days - clicks may not bear fruit.
Golden hour in our flat on Kodak Colour Plus. It’s our second year here and we still love it.
january
Starting (and ending) the year feeling known and feeling loved. I turned 30, my mum and aunt threw me a dinner party with guests rotating between courses and floors to the gong, caterpillar cakes and jugs of lethal negronis. Haniah took me away to a converted chapel in Bruton, and also to a taster bell-ringing session at our local church. I entered my final term at UCL, and presented ethnographic research to Gumtree’s product team. I read a lot and cooked a lot and ate a lot, and picked up my first in-print author portrait of several this year.
book: Queer Spaces, RIBA Publishing film: Tár podcast: Petrified art: Welsh coal mining charcoal sketches by Henry Moore at St Albans Museum TV: The Traitors newsletter: griefbacon by Helena Fitzgerald
The fish market in Riga on my Yashica T5. Little did I know how omnipresent fish markets would end up this year.
february
One of my goals for 2023 was to visit three new countries, and we repeated our annual tradition of the February city break to Riga this time - where we also returned with our annual tradition of COVID caught on the plane. I had some academic art (?) published, and some more portraits in novels. We watched mists over the park and murmurations over Brighton and lengthening evenings creep into our flat.
book: The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley film: short food films from Vittles podcast: Normal Gossip art: M.K. Ciurlonis at Dulwich Picture Gallery TV: The Crown newsletter: The Fence’s round-ups
Seoul on Silbersalz.
march
Fulfilling a long-time dream with two weeks in Seoul, for work and then for play. It was incredible. I ate unbelievable food, met colleagues for the first time in person and saw friends for the first time in years. It was beautiful and at times both overwhelming and lonely. I am hugely grateful to have worked on such an interesting programme to take me there - a bittersweet end to my time at YBI, a job and organisation and cohort of colleagues across the world from whom I learned so much. And a bittersweet end to a year and a half of university classes too, complete with the usual strikes and conflicting work/life schedules.
book: Deep Down by Imogen West-Knights film: Troll podcast: Death in Ice Valley art: an exhibition on data visualisation of clubbing at the Korean Museum of Contemporary Art theatre: After The Act at New Diorama newsletter: dinner document by Rebecca May Johnson
The boat between Tates on Kentmere 400.
april
I started a new job that was exactly what I wanted to be doing, and thankfully remains so by the close of the year. I spent my first long weekend in Brixham, supported by a UCL Anthropology Research Award - the first set of many magical moments in a town where I hope to spend many more. I shot several portraits and a gloriously fun wedding, went on the mail rail and revelled in my first year of Tate membership, thank you kind friends. And looking back through my camera roll it was indeed a month of kind friends: kind friends cooking me roasts and coming round for dinner from far away and gallery wandering and quiet, supportive co-working. It’s hard to convey in an annual round-up quite how much time was spent at my desk throughout 2023, but those aren’t necessarily the times I want to remember.
book: Dark, Salt, Clear by Lamorna Ash podcast: Guardian in Focus art: Isaac Julien at Tate Britain theatre: You Bury Me at the Orange Tree newsletter: The Real Sarah Miller
Beautiful blurred Brixham, on Silbersalz.
may
This year has felt like a realization of several promises made to myself back in 2021. For author portraits to become the centre of my professional photography practice, to travel more frequently and adventurously, to do a slow and wide professional pivot. It is an unfamiliar gratification to look backwards and see long-term efforts paying dividends. May’s challenges are clear in hindsight, back and forth and back and forth to Brixham in a constant battle with time and national rail infrastructure. But also the annual increasingly precious long weekend in the South West with increasingly farther flung friends, nice times in my own city, plenty of hours to read and to think (and to sleep) on glacially-paced transport.
book: Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad podcast: Code Switch art: Private Gardens at the Garden Museum theatre: NOW Festival at The Yard TV: The Ultimatum: Queer Love newsletter: idle thoughts by Shon Faye
Pol swimming in Tromsø harbour post-sauna, shot on iPhone.
june
A voyage to the Arctic Circle with friends - glorious views, my first running race, reindeer alongside the car, sauna and fjords and buns and freezing swims. The perfect trip, a much-needed one. And then many other less holidaying trips between Brixham and London, but also cold beers in the park and peaches on the balcony and a knife-edge balance of work and research and the elusive pursuit of a carefree summer lifestyle.
book: Boulder by Eva Baltasar podcast: Word of Mouth film: The Wicker Man (OG) art: Private Gardens at the Garden Museum TV: Succession newsletter: The Audacity by Roxanne Gay
Lighthouse heaven on the Île de Ré on Kodak Ektar.
july
A carefree summer lifestyle! Charroux through Haniah’s eyes and a lighthouse heaven for me on the Île de Ré. A weekend experiencing Brixham as a tourist and one overnighting with bats and stained glass. My second queer wedding photographed, and a charity print run in support of Brixham’s crumbling tidal pool. Passing through familiar places and thinking about the past in a momentarily measured way that I’d like to make more space for but I’m not sure there ever will be.
book: Drifts by Kate Zambreno podcast: The Secret History of the Estonia film: Minari art: medieval emotions at Charroux Abbey theatre: Dear England at the National Theatre newsletter: Hola Papi by JP Brammer
Passing through the gateway to the highlands - shot on iPhone as all my post-August film is abroad for development.
august
More illness, particularly unjust at the tailend of a season of hospital visits, surmounted through a long weekend in Scotland to stomp through the highlands and goldpan for our wedding rings. Which was not very successful but there were fruitful experiences elsewhere, and also art and nice times and good food and a ride on the beloved Glasgow subway. A deceleration of the year in retrospect, though it never feels like it in the living of it.
book: Seashaken Houses by Tom Nancollas film: Arrival podcast: The Hotel by Daisy Johnson art: Anselm Kiefer at the White Cube newsletter: sweater weather by Brandon Taylor
The swans on the river outside our door, staple companions this autumn.
september
Weddings, engagements, family. I joined the gym above the ice rink and felt like I was being indoctrinated into a new and unfamiliar society, sweat cooling with the temperatures while walking home on darkening mornings. Good reads and a new book club and a lot of time in front of a screen, both in the office and at home in the small hours - although frankly not enough time from my December perspective.
book: Mrs S. by K. Patrick podcast: Yeti art: Marina Abramovic at the Royal Academy film: The Nun II TV: The Traitors Australia newsletter: 10 Things Worth Sharing by Austen Kleon
A close-to perfect afternoon in Brighton, followed by a day of protest in London.
october
Protest. Grief, impotence, rage. It’s hard to form a true picture of the year before October as the last 3 months have irreversibly coloured my experience, as perspective-shifting events often do to even the moments that precede them. Perhaps that sounds dramatic - and it is! My memories are hard to sift beyond this, although I know October was a month I worked a huge amount at often unsociable hours. There was certainly love, and solidarities extended and received, reunions that will carry through to 2024 - many of them at marches. Coming togethers and recognition in unexpected places.
book: The Glutton by A. K. Blakemore podcast: I Hear Fear art: Julian Knxxx at the Barbican performance: Hawiyya Collective at Rich Mix film: horror shorts in London Film Festival TV: Alone (US) newsletter: The Pickle by Vashti Media
A season that has made me proud to be a part of London.
november
As above and more. Tracing solidarities across borders in a short trip to loved ones in Amsterdam, Belgium and Dusseldorf. Hours sucked into the screen in the palm of my hand, swathes of conversations in person and online. Breugels and beers, getting to know a new small person in my life, walks and long talks, pottery painting and seafood in Brighton, food and karaoke with friends new and old. And protest.
book: The Mirror by Magda Szabó podcast: Ghost Story art: Francis Alÿs at Wiels, Brussels performance: The Making of Pinocchio at Battersea Arts Centre TV: The Expanse newsletter: Palestine Nexus by Zachary Foster
Home.
december
A tapering away of the year, a scrabbling and a flailing. A winter wedding, office parties and starting football again and a haven in a cottage lent by a kind colleague and friend. Selling prints to fundraise, crafting watertight paragraphs for social media. Making wreathes and playing cards and getting drunk in the countryside with loved ones. Unable to stay away from the black hole of my phone. Our safe and lovely home to return to every night, food to cook for each other, family Christmas in Amsterdam feeling grateful and reproachful and sad. No tidy conclusion this year. Sometimes a year’s end is the closing of a chapter, and sometimes it’s just waking up to another day.
book: Close to Home by Michael Magee film: Saltburn podcast: The White Vault art: Steffi Reimers at Foam Gallery, Amsterdam performance: Midwynter at The Old Red Lion TV: The Valhalla Murders newsletter: utopian drivel by Huw Lemmey