Like a River
by Daniel Lyttleton
Sitting in the garden during the first lockdown my 3 year old son was doodling on the slabs with chalk. He started to sketch a blue line “look Daddy, like a river”.
This act was magical for me, and one that got me thinking. I thought about how knowledge and experience can be conceptualised through mark making, even from such a young age. Of course, my son has seen representations of rivers on kids TV programmes, and we have seen parts of a river in person, but to share that through his own representation of a river is where the interest is for me.
What does a river look like? This question instantly draws out experiences from your own mind, an active process of understanding. Experience and understanding lends itself to the act of photography, but unlike drawing a river, to photograph a river you have to be there, you need to experience the thing itself.
We live close to a river, in a city that bears its name, Stoke-on-Trent. The Trent is an elusive river, seldom seen or experienced because of its hidden course.
In my most recent work Where the river runs, I went looking for this river but because it is mostly hidden and inaccessible, whilst searching for the river I was attracted to something more. I started to explore more of the landscape in close proximity to the river, capturing ways we inhabit that space whilst playing with metaphors of its continuous flow.
This is the nature of photography, assumptions and knowledge are often undermined by actual experience. This experience can be overwhelming, millions of details before your eyes, so much to take in at any given moment. The photographer’s job is to compose a framework around this information – the photograph.
I find the process of photography liberating, and in my own practice this process has always been as important as the product. You can draw or paint a river in your own back garden, but to photograph a river you must go there. This process of searching and discovery is at the heart of my photographic practice.
Where the river runs is an ongoing personal project and journey.
Daniel Lyttleton is an independent photographer, co-founder of out of place books and Photography course leader at Staffordshire College.
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