Notes from the darkroom.
#10: on creativity
I used to think I had one language for making sense of the world.
A camera, a frame, a moment that didn’t wait to escape. Photography was instinct; instant. It fed the part of me nothing else reached.
Then writing arrived. Unannounced.
It unfolded and settled in.
One act happened on impulse, the other on time given. I’m not working on two paths but two tempos.
What surprised me wasn’t the writing. It’s the shape it gave to thoughts I carried for years. Thoughts I’d let drift unspoken.
And somehow, it reached the same place photography did. Not replacing it, but running alongside, as if it had been waiting for its moment to surface.
There was resistance at first. Some learning to live together. But cohesion settled fast. Writing felt less like an intrusion and more like evidence I hadn’t acknowledged yet. Like opening a door and finding a familiar version of myself I’d never met.
Maybe creativity works that way: not a single force, not a fight between crafts, but a shift between different modes of attention. What comes unscripted and what needs time to find form.
Photography still feels like my first language. But writing is no longer a guest. It’s another way of working through the same inner space, extending the surface I can work with.
In the end, the process is the same: you begin somewhere, with a plan you pretend to believe in, and end up where you needed to be, by letting go of the plan entirely.
Further thinking?
