The Invisible World

Photography helps me see more, while at the same time inviting me to look beyond what is immediately visible and to seek out what lies beneath the surface. I am drawn to these concealed depths because I sense that the real nature of things is hidden within them. Each photograph draws my attention to the invisible world that exists all around us and reminds me that this same invisible quality lives within me — an energy that permeates everything and that I feel especially mirrored in nature.

The belief that there is an invisible dimension to our lives brings me great comfort, especially since Geordie died. Though he is no longer physically here, in some ways he still is. His energy, my energy, and the energy between us—the force that infused our lives—continues its dance. He always loved that dance, and the ways we gave it physical form. Even without those forms, and even though I can’t see it anymore, I know it is still happening, and that, in some quiet way, we remain partners in it. The dance has become invisible, but that does not mean it is gone; it simply means that, in moments when I feel most alone, I have to trust more deeply in what I can no longer see.

I reach for my camera when I need a helping hand—to see in ways my eyes alone cannot. There is always so much more than what appears on the surface. My moments of greatest struggle often arise when the world suddenly feels flat. Through the camera, I am gently returned to the threshold between the visible and the invisible. With the simple press of the shutter, something of that meeting place—the in-between—is held. The camera becomes a quiet companion in an act of trust and faith, a gentle reminder that what influences our lives the most is not always what can be seen. Thank you, little camera!

I believe that each photograph can become imbued with an invisible quality. This is why two images of the same thing, by two different people, can feel so entirely unique. It is this invisible presence — or perhaps the ongoing search for it, since it is easy to lose touch with from time to time — that fascinates me most about photography. Without a sense of the invisible around me, my life loses some of its colour and texture.

John O’Donohue, the Irish poet and philosopher whose words I return to again and again, speaks beautifully of this when he writes: “Within us and around us there is an invisible world; this is where each of us comes from. Your relationship to the invisible influences so much of your life. When you cross over from the invisible into this physical world, you bring with you a sense of belonging to the invisible that you can never lose or finally cancel.”

How fitting, then, that a photograph itself is created invisibly — within the small, enclosed chamber of the camera, in a space where we cannot see, and where, if we were placed inside it, we would not be able to see at all. It is there, in this dark interior, that form begins to emerge. The photograph crosses over from the invisible into the physical world, carrying with it a trace of where it came from — a sense of belonging to the invisible. It reminds me of a presence and a depth that are always part of my life, and that, when I lose sight of this, I can simply press the shutter again and again.