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

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.