Solvitur Ambulando

At my secondary school, as in all state schools before compulsory team sports went the way of elasticated plimsolls and girls in baggy gym knickers, one afternoon every week was dedicated to "games". This was never a problem for me: I was quite sporty for a "swot" (definition: one with an unnatural leaning towards academic study), and was usually chosen for the first or second teams in rugby, cricket, and hockey, despite having little interest in and only the vaguest understanding of the rules and strategies of any team sport. For others, though, I realise "games" were a weekly torment and a humiliation, particularly for the cack-handed, ill-coordinated, and bespectacled, with no interest whatsoever in chasing a ball or knocking each other over.

If we chose to stay on for the sixth form, however, another option became available, at least for a few: to join the Perambulators. This had nothing to do with pushing a pram [1].  I can't now remember how the Perambulators were chosen – it was something of a privilege, as I recall, with numbers restricted to about a dozen boys, drawn from both upper and lower sixths – but the arrangement was essentially that the group would be driven out to some rural spot, where we would go for a circular ramble, accompanied by one or more of our teachers. On the walk smoking was permitted (in fact encouraged, as in, led by example), and on the way back we would sometimes stop off for a drink in a pub. It was fun, although the smoking and drinking part was not widely advertised as a feature, obviously.

Strange as it may sound, I had never been "walking" before. Most families in places like Stevenage didn't (and probably still don't) "go for a walk". On holiday we sat on the beach, splashed about in the sea, or went for a ride of some sort. At weekends, we might occasionally go for a picnic, but that mainly involved driving, sitting, and eating. Recreational walking, involving special footwear, the use of maps, and getting cold and wet was something you might do in the Scouts, but was not a recognised family leisure activity. Besides, our parents and grandparents had done quite enough of that in the army to last a lifetime, thank you very much. So Perambulation was actually quite a good preparation for a certain sort of middle-class life. It meant I didn't laugh hysterically when a bracing walk was proposed on Boxing Day afternoon, for example, or wonder out loud why anyone would want to book a remote cottage in Wales, 25 miles from the nearest beach, for a summer holiday? Thanks to Perambulation, I passed these simple entry requirements when I encountered my future partner's robustly outdoorsy family; why, thanks to geography field trips, which were Perambulation writ large, I could even use an OS map in a high wind and driving rain.

 But walking also has a mental – I'm tempted to say "spiritual" – dimension that is hard to describe, but easily experienced. There's something about the physiological effects of keeping a rhythmic, steady pace over medium to long distances in the open air which can stimulate thought and a sense of well-being, and even a curiously meditative state of heightened awareness (unless you are wearing boots that are too loose, too tight, or insufficiently waterproof). As an extreme example I think of a strange little book written in 1978 by film-maker Werner Herzog, Vom Gehen Im Eis (translated as Of Walking in Ice, and still available). In a move typical of Herzog, when he heard that a friend and mentor was gravely ill – the 78-year old film historian Lotte Eisner – he decided to walk – yes, walk – from Munich to Paris, "believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot". Rightly, as it turned out [2]. In Herzog's account it took from 23rd November to 14th December 1974, which is good going for a non-stop journey on foot of 450 miles. The book recounts the journey in the form of a diary, as a sort of expiatory pilgrimage, or a real-life Winterreise. The whole adventure, as you might expect, is tinged with Herzog's characteristic super-intensity, constantly in danger of tipping over into madness. Whenever I dip into it, I am reminded of the poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came" by Robert Browning, in which perfectly innocent stimuli like farm animals and implements become transformed into threatening objects of ill-omen, incorporated into the narrative of an increasingly hallucinatory personal quest [3]. But the belief that there is something special – sacramental, even – in the act of simply walking is widely held. As the saying goes: solvitur ambulando (roughly, "perambulation will get it sorted").

Anyway, most of my photography happens on walks, although nothing too strenuous these days, and in recent times I've taken to using my phone almost exclusively, and not just on the more routine, local walks. I have, on a few occasions, had reason to regret this, but not often enough to warrant always lugging something more substantial around, on a "just in case" basis. In case you haven't yet got the memo, phone photography is now way better than it has any right to be. I'm using an iPhone 12 mini and, by using the Halide app to get PNG "raw" files, I find that it can deliver results just as good as the fixed-lens Fuji X70 compact I was previously using as my "pocket" camera. Seriously: it's very impressive.

I've been selecting and arranging the pictures taken on these excursions into mini-sequences of three and four images, which I have inevitably named "iPhone Perambulations". The (so far) inviolable rule I have applied to these sequences is that all of the pictures must have been taken on the same walk, and must be shown in a chronological sequence, labelled to show how close or far apart in time they were taken. Photo-sequences benefit from such rules, I think, if only to avoid (or at least put a brake on) the temptation to resort to formulas or to the sort of semi-fakery that quietly adds the perfect complementary image taken on one walk into the sequence from another. Obviously, only I can know or even care about this, but it's a useful and creative discipline to follow.

Rather than print the photographs individually, I have been printing them all together on a single cut-down A2 sheet, with captions to indicate their time and location, mostly either full width (59.4cm) or trimmed to 50cm. The idea is that they should become a single, frameable, self-contained artwork. The ones I'm showing here are just a small sample: as you can imagine, as a committed daily perambulator I have already put together quite a number of these, retrospectively, although it's inevitable that not every walk yields a suitable sequential design. A majority have, though, almost as if – without getting too Herzogian about it – an unconscious thematic link had been driving my choices of photographic subject and approach all along. Which is not impossible: most walks do have their own mood and motivations, after all. Doubtless, now I'm aware of this, it may become a more conscious process, until it does eventually become too formulaic, and I get bored with it, at which point this new "perambulations" project will have finally run its course. In the mean time, though, this is proving to be productive, and, which is more important, good fun.

1. A wheeled baby-carriage is known as a "pram" in Britain, shortened from "perambulator", i.e. what in the US would be called a "stroller", apparently.

2. In an interview at Stanford University's Another Look Book Club (here, about 20 minutes in), Herzog claimed that 8 years later she complained to him of her infirmities and said: "I am saturated with life (in German: Lebenssatt). There is still this spell upon me that I must not die – can you lift it?" He says that he did, and that she died 8 days later. Hmm. It must be great, to live so comfortably within your own mythology like that.

3. Extreme exertion can induce altered states. A good friend did the 95 mile endurance run from Milngavie north of Glasgow to Fort William in the Highlands, the so-called West Highland Way ultra-marathon, in his 50s, twice (I know... Talk about "super-intensity, constantly in danger of tipping over into madness"...). The first time very bad weather intervened, underlining the "ultra" part, and he found himself hallucinating an accompanying ship escort halfway along the course.