Handheld - Kate Kennington Steer

Handheld

Kate Kennington Steer

Handheld is a meditation on how chronic illness mediates my contact with a single place, often dictating how - the means and the form - I make a photograph, until, on some days it becomes the subject of photographic enquiry no matter what the situation.  This is an attempt to render some of this visible.

No matter what the subject, all my photography is dictated by the conditions of my body, which is affected by chronic illness and disability. Further, the 'subject' of some of these handheld photographs is my walker—the physical means by how I can reach my garden and, on bad days, reach my art studio. In other words, I normally encounter the world around me with some mechanical device being 'between' my body and the thing I wish to watch.

• Unsteady

  unsteady

  I navigate the fresh-laid path

  gradient unfamiliar, bricks porous, sponge receptive,

  mosses already gather where new edge

  has been patched in alongside old

  down I stagger, my forward momentum driven off

  balance, rendering the slope more precipitous

  in mind than actuality, the walker wishes to rush in delight

  at play with magnetic forces, I can feel her tugging

  I tighten my hold more grimly, brakes itch as they inch

  together we land somewhat rockily, an awkward scarecrow’s

  balletic poise ready to roll onto uneven concrete

  half a century old, that wear of daily tyres now fracking

  and flaking into craters, spitting pebbles and sand and dirt

  kicked up beneath heavy treads, a heel catches

  and its a short skate

  to the lump and bump of uncut grass, cast off

  kilter as wheels stick in the wet winter fresh

  rutting and streaming strands in our wake

  out from under into shadows of cypress

  into weak sun desperate to course through the haze

  white light without warmth makes one colour sing

  then another as i reach the bench, sit and settle

  to shrink then expand my field of sensations

  conscious the northeasterly that tickles stray curls

  along my collar brings with it the express train’s roar

  sirens wails, car door slams, the mewl of the new born

  next door, that dog’s exultation in his adventure

  to the river every day about now, then notice

  how the air itself dwindles as i sift it through birdsong,

  collar doves, an early mate-ready great tit,

  the echoing invitation floating down the spiralling

  thermals as a red kite surveys his domain, spinning

  shrinking to the serenade of blackbirds from each bush

  bookending the garden, the back and forth display

  a siren song for sore muscles bench-slat pressed

  flesh as yet unfamiliar with the shapes, slant and rim

  on this first reconnaissance of the year, finally

  she raises her camera, squints and probes,

  roams gently across, above, behind, until drawn

  to the echo of between, and its literalness staggers her,

  but immediately curiosity is snagged and soul engaged

  so head’s object becomes heart’s subject, at once

  a making strange and a celebration of ordinary habitude,

  the very aid that allowed - at the same time it encumbered -

  today’s trek here, mediates my remaining still

  for those five minutes longer than weary sense might allow

  I will need these wheels on the upward stretch to the side door

  leaning in pressing down gravity dragging sagging limbs

  and a palpable seeping energy slowly homeward,

  yet spirit remains lit

  by the insight given, results of interrogation of curves

  into the gaps, the holes, the nuts and bolts and

  fixings flaring bright, all received by grateful sight,

  all await her next long loving gaze

• (interruption/intermission/interlude)

  I dream of summiting the Himalayas,

  the breathless climb, the seeing across continents,

  blue ridged mountains retreating before me,

  receding into mists where my myths are born.

  I sit beside lakes in the nadir of crevasses

  so deep no woman has ever yet fathomed them:

  periwinkle sliding through aqua to a

  bottle blue so green beneath the hanging cliffs

  the wild swimmers lose their way

  between shadows. I gaze over the wide plains

  of the smokey haze of welsh blue slate

  purpled into indigo lying under

  a lowering sky, sunlight uplands

  momentarily illumined between knife-edged

  passes and the rolling lip of a glacial fold,

  perfect uplift for the daredevil skier.

  I hold fast to my grandmother’s blanket draped

  over legs currently declining to walk,

  the soft comfort of ages standing guard

  to cushion my bed-bound days.

• playing in the ruins i

  a wild writhing exultation in caramels and ochres, a brown study

  drawn from the unsteadiest of hands of a hesitant day

  burnt sienna raw umber uplifted from mere mud

  by the seismic interruptions of her tremors

  her imbalance intersects, interacts with the unfocused shimmer

  winter half-light threads through the interstices

  of her becoming space, a mess, a jumble, all possibility

  entwined in the indistinct desires ready for a sorting, a clearing

  a division which is yet to take place, discernment incomplete

  edges furl colours rise textures recede in competition

  for her attention, hooks pull and pinch as her view

  wings up and away, trailing her earthbound glory,

  her fecund potential exposed, at these flames will sear

• playing in the ruins ii

  ice frets the wall of windows, showers a pewter light

  across bags through piles under boxes, revealing little

  yet it brings a fragile affinity, ties her vibrating anticipation

  to a half-hitched breath, to a close-fisted chest,

  to the raw burn of dust-filled air in a throat where glands bulge,

  where the possibility of clarity becomes once more impassable

  nonetheless discipline prompts the long, lazy arcs of looking

  quartering the room, as if a butterfly’s momentary settling

  might snatch the slightest shutter press, a grace so tremulously distinct

  from the purposeful dwelling, the waiting, the breathing-with

  for she does not have a way today slow the steady spin

  in her head the thunder of blood in her ears, or the jump of nerves under her hips

  it becomes apparent today is not the day she hoped, for the wet

  splatter of paint, the smoosh and crack of stained hands

  finding joy. Today her disappointment rewinds, binds itself

  back into acceptance, as she levers herself up, finger still on the trigger

  as the world wavers with her, contended she says ‘as above, so below’

  she will find later she managed to play in the ruins of this day,

  after all

• in between

  in between the pale,

  grey clouds conglomerate,

  a barely-there blue,

  an indistinct mass of ennui.

  ochre catkins recognise the wind,

  momentarily dance their colour

  across sky,

  before a blank descends,

  a blink stretched taut,

  a brown-black enormity lying

  heavy against the eye,

  steadfastly refusing any

  passage through

  or seeing past.

  must the indefinable

  be sat with,

  waiting the lack out,

  until

  it dissolves, gives up, releases

  the nothingness to show

  what is hidden in the blurred edges

  limning the rail?

  a shape

  forces this viewer to contort

  already pained limbs,

  to look round impossible corners,

  to turn convex into concave.

  one shape imposes a single view,

  one long plane,

  becomes a fitted mask,

  a tight spy hole.

  then, through a shattering of branches

  morphs into

  a jump-cut edit

  of another full stop,

  of another blank,

  of a disjunct:

  information remains

  teasingly just out of reach

  behind the darkest

  bottle-green blur of a hedge

  or perhaps a single leaf,

  here where size is distorted

  and volume compacted.

  there are limits to this seeing.

  I am limited.

  so I am compelled to ask

  how meaning might be made

  from such seemingly

  empty space.

  whether I would settle for

  even partial revelation

  of these enshadowed places,

  this mystery

  of endarkenment

  I apparently need to welcome

  if I am to see the light.

  for now the gaps and the blanks

  have become rest stops,

  those breath-gathering places,

  the required pause and hiatus,

  those necessary byways

  which allow prophetically

  straight roads

  to be made of curling

  desert highways, messengers

  proclaiming the coming of the One

  whose legendary mud

  might massage

  my eye-lids soft

  and my eye-sockets loose

  so the glare of information held

  in a blossom bursting its bounds

  will always defy a single glance;

  so such ordinary miracles

  will always shew forth praise

  from my lips

---

Kate Kennington Steer is a disabled writer, contemplative photographer and visual artist.  Following a residency at the New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham, in 2023 and a bursary from DAiSY (Disability Arts In Surrey), Kate is working on the bright-+/well project: a large series of works, combining photography, printing, painting and poetry examining wellbeing and the built environment. Progress can be seen at @KateKenningtonSteer. Kate’s first solo exhibition, ‘episodes’, at Farnham Pottery,(July-August 2022) featured digital paintings made whilst experiencing FND seizures.  Most recently, her work was  exhibited at ’Guildford House Open’, Guildford House Gallery; ‘Daisy-Chain’, The Lightbox, Woking; ‘Glimmers’, New House Art Space, Guildford; at ‘Kintsugi’, Vernon House, Farnham.  She irregularly blogs at imageintoikon.com. Her Facebook iPhone photography project ‘acts of daily seeing’ has been running since 2015. Short films combining her writing, photography and digital paintings can be found @katekenningtonsteer on YouTube.