A public diary

I've never kept a proper personal diary but upon receiving a Canon 450D for Christmas 2008 I decided to do a '365', attempting to take some kind of self portrait every day for 365 days. As I would be uploading a photo to flickr each day that was specifically tied to that day I thought I may as well write a little bit of text about that day to go with each picture, so soon enough the whole thing had turned into a kind of photo diary of the year 2009, hosted on flickr.

My usual practice is to make any personal pictures private when uploading them to flickr as I can't see why anyone outside of my friends and family would find them interesting. But much like taking the plunge in uploading my unresearched ideas and doings on this blog, I decided to make a good few of the pictures public and with that, any personal text that might go with them.

As I expected, it was a strange feeling to put up online any thing remotely personal and to my surprise, I very quickly (like, by February!) ran out of ways to photograph myself other than looking at the camera like a vain teenager. I tried not to get too worked up about how good or bad the pictures were looking or about how many days I had missed a photo (I think in the end I took a photo 307 days out of the 365).

A little further into the year I really started to notice the benefits of the diary side of the project (both through text and image). There were loads of things from just a few months previous that I'd completely forgotten about, little details mentioned in the text that may have seemed trivial at the time.

Of course I couldn't resist making a book out of it using the fantastic Blurb.com.


Seeing the whole collection together in print form really gives it a context and lets me revel in nostalgia over moments otherwise forgotten. I particularly like any text that referred to someone met that day or very recently as "Dan's girlfriend" or "Jedd the singer", but who later became my good friend and flat-mate, or the lead singer in my band, for example. For one reason or another there are quite a few examples in the book where I either meet someone for the first time or mention an acquaintance who has since become a good friend and/or a bit part of my life. It's as if 2009 was a year of seed planting and corners approached, but not turned.

Another way of looking at it is that 2009 was in fact not any different from any other year and that the simple act of documenting the year highlighted all the details in the passing of time otherwise lost.

"The little things, there's nothing bigger, is there?" Vanilla Sky [2002]

You can see the whole set on flickr, or at least those photos set to 'public'.