Fiona Huddleston
Photography
"The Intricacy of Loneliness"
A Series of Cyanotype Interpretations
Click on any of the small thumbnail images to open the filmstrip.
I recently completed "Cultivating Creativity", an online course with Doug Chinnery and Valda Bailey, where I chose to explore the emotion of loneliness through the creation of feather cyanotypes. The cyanotype process is outlined on the Cyanotypes Gallery page. I photographed each of the completed cyanotype prints in various ways and then worked to create a set of images that together portrayed "The Intricacy of Loneliness".
My sincere thanks to “Down Like Silver” songwriters, Caitlin Elizabeth Canty and Peter Bradley Adams, for their poignant song, Broken Coastline, and its moving lyrics from which I have drawn my image titles.
“Loneliness”
Now it is Loneliness who comes at night
Instead of Sleep, to sit beside my bed.
Like a tired child I lie and wait her tread,
I watch her softly blowing out the light.
Motionless sitting, neither left or right
She turns, and weary, weary droops her head.
She, too, is old; she, too, has fought the fight.
So, with the laurel she is garlanded.
Through the sad dark the slowly ebbing tide
Breaks on a barren shore, unsatisfied.
A strange wind flows… then silence. I am fain
To turn to Loneliness, to take her hand,
Cling to her, waiting, till the barren land
Fills with the dreadful monotone of rain.
Katherine Mansfield
(14th October, 1888 – 9th January, 1923)