It’s amazing how much can happen in just a few weeks. I flew to India at the start of the month feeling like one person and have returned feeling like someone else. Of course I’m being melodramatic, but what else can you expect after spending time in a country that so overwhelms the senses and the self – at once reinforcing the stereotypes and subverting the tired old cliches. I feel older and yet oddly reinvigorated. I feel there is unfinished business for me over there but am enthusiastic about my work and the new direction it’s taking.
It’s going to take me a while to unpick the stories and experiences that have punctuated the past few weeks and to turn them from scribbles of shorthand, sound files and images into tangible pieces of journalism, to be published or not as the case may be. Some will suit words, and others just pictures.
One thing my trip has revealed to me is that I’m now officially more interested in telling stories through images than words, although of course the interviews and written side remain key. It’s not easy to see the most sensible way forward for me from here – the media is a shambles at the moment and the photography side is no exception, but I need to find a direction.
Only last week I had a features commission pulled from me and taken in-house. They kept my interview idea – one I had pitched and conveniently set up. I suspect this is going to happen more often as the recession gets worse. One of my former papers, the Manchester Evening News, has joined the swelling ranks of publications making cuts. In editorial almost 40 out of 90 staff are being threatened with redundancy. Grim days indeed, and not a great time to be a journalist of any kind. I have to decide what is the best way forward from here.