If I had to name the thread running through July, it would be a pace. Slowing down followed me through the whole July, and by the end of the month, four pictures had quietly gathered themselves into a kind of record of that.
The first one found me on my own doorstep, almost literally. On my way to work, walking down to the basement to get my bike, I passed a snail gliding down the stairs. There’s a paradox I keep circling back to: we spend so much of our lives rushing toward somewhere, want to be at someplace as fast as possible – when the getting-there is never really the point but taking the time to embrace the journey: A snail is supposed to be the emblem of slowness – a quality that we see as negative – but in this picture she looked almost dynamic, caught mid-glide, utterly committed to her direction. What matters more than speed, I think, is whether we’re heading toward the right destination at all. That thought made me smile as I started my commute.
The second picture happened in London, in black and white, after a visit to the Photographers’ Gallery — an exhibition of female Japanese photographers spanning from the 1950s to now. What stayed with me wasn’t the main show but the print room in the basement, where two photographers Sayori Ichida and Miho Kajoka had built their whole practice around the idea of Zen. I came out of that space changed, more alert somehow. It was a sunny day, and I noticed a street sign whose shadow didn’t match it at all — a small visual disagreement between object and shadow, framed by a street-cap and the brick-wall as canvas for it all. None of it was arranged for me. I just happened to be paying attention. That’s the picture stillness takes when you finally have some.
The third picture pulled me out of a mood I wasn’t even in. I was on my way to the library in Berlin, not thinking about photography, when I passed a huge tree that had been cut down and from what was left of it, new growth was already pushing up. The light and shadow around it did something I couldn’t walk past. I hadn’t intended to make an image that day. I received one instead. That distinction feels important to me: often photography sets out to make something; unintentional photography lets something arrive.
Which brings me to the last picture, a tree in Kew Gardens, taken after a forest bathing workshop. That workshop taught me something I thought I already knew but clearly didn’t: slowing down doesn’t happen instantly. We started by deliberately slowing our breath, then our walking pace, and only then did we begin noticing the different greens, the different shapes nature.
At one point during the walk we reached what the facilitator called a threshold — an imaginary line. Before crossing it, she asked us to lay down our expectations and worries, not to abandon them, just to set them aside for a while, with the understanding that we could pick them back up later. Then we could step forward with empty hands and an open mind. I know I do this intuitively sometimes, in flashes. What I’m working on now is doing it on purpose — often enough that intuitive becomes the default again, rather than the exception.
That’s where July left me: with a snail, a shadow, a stump, and a threshold — four small proofs that slowing down is less a mood and more a practice.
If you want to try it yourself: find your own threshold this week — a doorway, a street corner, the moment before you open your laptop — and before you cross it, set down whatever you’re carrying, just for a breath. Then notice what’s actually in front of you. You don’t need a camera for it. But if one happens to be in your hand, don’t be surprised if it asks to be used.
