Extract from the
“The Long Road Home”
Having this opportunity to reflect on my life I now better realise that I was so fortunate to have been gifted with so many experiences, each shaping my own development and resulting in the person I would become. Being born in post war Britain when poverty was still common place, into a Christian Family, and one of four boys helped me to appreciate the value of sharing the importance of friendships and the values that are learnt from family, each of these would help to provide me with a moral code that has stayed with me throughout my life. This doesn’t mean that I was a saint that would be far from the truth, I have made so many mistakes and have so many regrets but the appreciation of right and wrong I hope has always ensured that I was aware of my shortcomings and I am thankful that I was always given the choice to change.
Little did I know the impact that losing the sight in my eye as a child would have on my early development, a lack of depth perception would mean that everyday tasks such as classroom learning would be much more difficult and with reduced peripheral vision meant that simple tasks such a crossing the street or even looking over your shoulder would become challenging.
Who would have thought that Filmmakers, Cinema and the public would embrace a visual cinematic world of 3D and CGI would lead the development of three dimensional set design, opening up so many opportunities to explore new worlds, sadly much of this is missed from someone who has only monocular sight and strange that I should choose a profession that was so dependent on stereoscopic vision. It seems strange then that no one ever questioned the impact injuries such as these have had on our lives or the restrictions it places upon you, opticians have said on many occasions that only having the sight in one eye is not classed as partially sighted, which still leaves me confused? If only one eye of two is working it would appear logical that the result is partial.
It was the late Prof Richard Gregory writing in his book the Eye and Brain “Psychology of Seeing” who established that in experiments on similar people as myself, had I not been given an eye patch for an extended period of time then vision may have returned to normal or at least have been partially restored. He concluded from his research that the real damage was not to the eye but to the brain, maybe that’s been the problem it wasn’t that I was partially sighted, maybe it was brain damage? Whatever the eventual diagnosis
As I have grown older I have come to better understand that it is the sum of all these experiences that form the building blocks making up the character of each of us, the people we become, inform the decisions we make and the directions we will take through the signposts we choose to follow, on our own personal journey throughout our lives.
I believe that if we stay strong and keep faith in our own ambitions we can find reward, I may never fully achieve all of my own dreams but I have always maintained that I refuse to reach the end of my journey wondering “What If”
My journey and the experiences that it has given me differ little from many other people that have gone before and many more that will follow, how we use the experience, how we react and interact with the challenges we face through these experiences I believe has been the key to my own self-fulfilment.
Little did I know when I was gifted a book; ‘The Most Beautiful Women, it would change my life and in that one, defining moment when I took the decision to buy my first camera it would open up so many opportunities.
Photography not only allowed me to create my own pictures and show others the way I viewed the world but also became a means of personal therapy; acting as a conduit allowing me to address many of my own issues. Whilst taking those early pictures; for the first time I remember feeling that the world became a much more level playing field, I no longer felt I was being judged on my ability to read or write, that I wasn’t being looked down on because of my obvious insecurities, now the image became the focus of the aesthetic process and was both subjective and more difficult to judge, this wasn’t the truth of course but from those early aspirations was born ambition. Once conquered the camera became the tool that would allow me to Photograph some of my own heroes, to appreciate the world around me and to travel the world experiencing many other cultures, introducing me to people from the slums of Bangkok to the Aristocrats of England, it provided me with the opportunity to revisit my past and an attempt to make sense of the many fears and phobias that I have constantly held some of them since childhood and eventually opened up a pathway into teaching that otherwise would have been extremely difficult.
Through teaching I learnt to use my own experiences to inform others and this provided me with the opportunity to influence the development and nurture the ambitions of likeminded people. This has left me with the most wonderful memories of all the students I had the pleasure to teach. I have often said that if I look back at a photograph even after all these years, I can still remember the moment I pressed the shutter.
Gemma remains as enthusiastic about the outdoors as she has ever been and keeps me feeling young by challenging me to the most arduous of bike rides, kayaking adventures and most recently fishing trips in the Lochs of Scotland in our recently purchased Canadian canoe, I really appreciate the time we spend together on these adventures and its only after the event that I realise I am starting to feel old.
Carolyn remains one of my closest and dearest friends who has shown great patience and restraint whilst trying to teach me about social media, when she left teaching she opened up her own Art & Design company but is never too busy to provide all the artwork for my own ventures, we still get together most weekends and she continues to use pepper in her Bolognese sauce.
I haven’t seen Andy for a while, we worked together for so many years in teaching and shared so many fond memories, he remained in teaching after my retirement and he still remains one of the most informed teachers I have known in Photographic practice.
Suzi as always supports whatever the next hair brained idea I come up with and has always been the levelling influence in my life, I would have never achieved any of my ambitions without her constant support and encouragement, we still go away at every opportunity and we continue to share our lives and our passion for photography together.
For me, I still meet from time to time with that young boy who ran away from home and I knew so many years ago, we still walk hand in hand and whilst the memories he holds may have faded with time for me they never really disappear.
Trevor Griffiths