The Legacy

"The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime".

Ray Bradbury - Farenheit 451.

Beyond the 'must do's' - making a living, keeping the bills paid, taking care of yourself - there's the things that really count -  when we enable ourselves and others to give and share something that truly enriches life, here and now and, hopefully, for after we're gone.

Sometimes the 'must do's' can become so burdensome that they can blur or blind us to those higher joys. I've certainly been finding that lately, as life has become more arduous. There are times when the sigh into the moment reflects the 'groan' deep within caused by the frustration of lack of resources or the loss of ability to be as aware and as responsive as you used to be. It can all simply seem too much, so it's wonderful when you encounter a moment which makes a difference and reminds you that you can make a mark and enrich the world.

I had another opportunity, on two occasions, to work with Auerlie this month, and both were a sheer delight. Not only was it wonderful to create some truly satisfying art, but it was great to be discussing all manner of subjects with another artist who is clearly thinking about what it's all for and coming up with some sensible answers.

We spent one afternoon working in the nearby woods - it was too hot to walk too far, so we worked at a couple of shady spots on the river and in between two key sessions, had a break for lunch. As we sat and discussed creativity, Auerlie shared how she was so delighted to be creating such a rich collection of images of herself at this moment in her life, and how much joy it brought - hopefully not just now, at this moment, but in future years, when she will be able to look back and delight in those photos, recalling the times that the images were made.

One of the wonders I often enjoy now is accessing the catalogue of work in the last decade and recalling the fun and pleasure of meeting so many people and working together to create something for others to share. It matters, I think, because it says so clearly that we can engage with life in a fashion that says 'this is meant to matter' - we are carried away by the richness of such moments.

We are not simply to make a living - to punch our ticket and silently vanish into the earth... to do so would be to truly impoverish life. By sharing deeply of the richness that is here and now, making that something which can genuinely endure, we truly outlive ourselves. That is our real potential - to take the splendor of life, to express to each other and ourselves, the true significance of today.



Morning Glory, Tangled and 'And, Rest'. Model: Aurelie Anais. Photography by Howard Nowlan.

gems amidst the void

"There is a human loneliness that stems from another source than a lack of companionship... it is a supernatural defect, which can only be remedied by grace". Roger Scruton.

I finally got hold of the harrowing yet astonishing film, To End All Wars this weekend - the true story of a Japanese  P O W camp of principally British soldiers forced to build a railway through the grueling cruelty of their captors in the Burmese jungle in the 1940's. Amidst some sterling performances here, we begin to discover that beneath our shocking capacity for selfish evil and inhumanity lies something we all require at our very core - to know a truth which makes us other than what we so naturally de-fault to when the veneer is gone. Even in the utter desolation of such a reality, we begin to discover what truly matters - the power of a mercy beyond us, and the manner in which that mercy alone infuses life, even in such squalor, with meaning, value and purpose.

The film reminded me just how hard it can be in our current world to hear and encounter what truly matters, especially in our own relationship to everyday life. Take what is closest to us - our own bodies, for example. We usually wrap most of our skin and nerves in layers for much of our lives, so, aside perhaps from a morning shower or an evening soak, most of us never allow ourselves to really immerse our bodies in the natural world - walk barefoot through a natural wood, or better yet, "air bathe" our bodies by spending some moments naked in such natural surroundings. Everything today is given filtered or packaged, even our recreation. In a world, however, where all such comforts are gone and all that is left is our bodily selves, to end all wars spoke of how a richer, deeper communion, undimmed by squalor and suffering, is what truly makes us precious and thereby where we ultimately discover treasure amidst earthen vessels.

What is true of life is equally true in art. We are surrounded by, drowning in, images today which leave us desolate, for not only, however 'real' or graphic their content, do they contain nothing (the soul of the subject and often the 'artist' is absent), but their only aim is to deaden our souls as well  - to engender an engagement where the result is empty and pointless beyond the immediate.

Great art marries heaven and earth, soul and grace, reality and hope.

Ours is a time which often negates such ease and freedom and desecrates the vital beauty of a person by making them less than they should be, thus the body itself becomes no more than a device, a means for gratifying our superficial approach to one another, rather than valuing, pursuing, something richer and deeper in our lives and in our society.

The lack of such yearning - for a return to innocence - is no doubt why our world currently seems so 'windowless' when it comes encountering God. The defacing of love itself, especially eros, dislocates us from the allure and call to a stillness and poignancy where such an enchantment may whisper deeply to us all.

Life, be it through crushing hardship or astonishing, unnatural joy, longs for us to be so tutored, but we so quickly choose, whenever possible, to run and escape the call of these theaters and block their intrusion with the clutter and noise of modernity.

May the author and maker of all that has lasting value continue to be merciful to us, and ignore such folly, and make us people who are fully alive - children, entirely, of His grace.

Images: Balance. Model:Katy. Poise. Model: Magenta. From Above. Model: Magenta.
All images created and owned by Howard Nowlan. Unison Photo Arts.

When the rhythm changes.

"What is a muse? In its purest form, a muse is perhaps best defined as something that triggers inspiration in an artistic or creative sense. It doesn’t have to be an inanimate object; most artists’ muses tend to be people. 

Creativity is impossible to separate from inspiration.

By trying to photograph someone repeatedly, it says both that there’s perhaps more to capture than is possible in a single frame, as well as all of the past frames being insufficient or incomplete in some way".

Ming Thein.

It's proved to be a difficult week.

It started with having to close my Deviant Art portfolio (due to them no longer facilitating older web servers, which I have to use) - a link back some seven years to some wonderful comments from other photographers across the world - and it ended with my having to cancel two of my principal outdoor shoots of the summer, as the English weather, after getting on for some fourteen months, is still refusing to deliver something resembling warmer days for more than a fleeting few hours.

It's frustrating, to say the least, but none of that, in a larger context, hardly matters.

What did matter was that yesterday, I was able to sit down with a young lady who has been working with me since last March and have a real heart to heart discussion about the wonders of life and the sheer privilege and delight of being able to be creative in this fashion, and what it really says about us.

The conversation reminded me that what all of this activity is really all about is a 'peeking through the window' to glean a glimpse, catch a taste, of the richness, the fragrance, of what all the beauty, all the grace says about what is at the very depth of us... the yearning to be part of something more than the futility and the frustration of what so often becomes 'life'.

Art drives us to engage with more than the drudgery. When we hear 'that song' or glance a view which stops us dead, we know, in such moments, that we'd give anything  to truly "be" there - not to just be a spectator, but to be transported into all that such a moment holds.

In the conversation Jesus has with the women at Jacob's well in John 4, we see how the intention of what truly matters is to lift our sights from the drag of the monotony of our views (be they practical, relational or spiritual - the women concerned here raises all three) to the real landscape of the reality we are engaged with. There is actual meaning and significance, of eternal stature, Jesus assures her, in this life. She goes away a changed person.

Life rushes us by, and we seek to do what we can to catch some of its wealth, but sometimes, we really need to come aside and listen to the real 'conversation' that is underneath what so often takes our time, because when we do, it allows us to re-orientate our perspective, and see what really counts.

Images: Beneath the Thicket. Model: Vicci.  Daydream. Model: Chrissie. Rainy Afternoon: Models: Magenta, Kari & Loella.

The Thin Line

"The temptation is always to detach interest from the person and attach it just to the body, but real beauty isn't simply skin deep, and the intention, sometimes the achievement of art is to express, through depicting the body (form), the splendor of embodiment - a being freely expressing the joy of being through that form and the grace of life itself".                                                  Roger Scruton on Beauty.

You never know what you've got till it's gone.

Some years ago, I was returning to England after a month away in Colorado in America. As my flight approached Bristol and we descended below the (inevitable) grey rain clouds, I was welcomed by the pleasing green of England - something which, I realized, had been very absent in my time away.
Listening to the radio a few days ago, a group of experts were discussing how we may, due to weather changes, have to get used to loosing the famous green lawns of the country in a few years time.

We're good at 'paving paradise', it seems. Replacing what's around us naturally with often radical changes. We often benefit, at least immediately, from such adjustments, but we often loose something along the way.

One of the reasons that art is vital is that, when done well, it causes us a moment of pause.

Like a summer's day in a meadow filled with moments of delight, art allows us to look deeper at ourselves and our world - to re-connect with questions and considerations that add depth and definition to our brief moments here, but the value, the need, for such moments can so quickly become lost if we fail to allow these pauses, allow such considerations, to inhabit us and lead is into that larger realm where beauty guides us.

The richness of art nude photography is truly achieved when, whilst creating an image, you know you are reflecting something of the depth, the value, of the person who you are privileged enough to work with - that their beauty, captured in that moment 'speaks' to the world that what truly counts about us, though often obscured by our car parks and pollution, hasn't been entirely lost or forgotten - we still know there is a treasure deeper than our pain and scars, and that keeps us wanting and relishing those rare moments when we truly encounter grace which offers a joy beyond words - a beauty which, perhaps one day, will pave paradise.


Images by Howard.
Magenta at Codda. Nicola in the Gallery. Vicki at the Tor.

The True Imperative

"The thief comes to steal, to kill and to destroy. I come to give life and to give it abundantly".
John 10:10

An interesting cartoon made an appearance on Face Book this week. It illustrated a 'Western' woman, dressed in a bikini, walking passed a Muslim woman, wearing a garment from head to foot, and both were shown as thinking that they were sorry about the 'oppression' of the other. It's a simplistic approach to a matter, fraught with all manner of assumptions regarding what is pious and promiscuous, liberating and demeaning, but it opens an opportunity for reflection.

Human nature allows us to truly value or greatly demean ourselves, others and the world around us, so the real question we face is what motivates us to respond and behave in either a constructive or despoiling fashion?

We'd all like to think of ourselves as captains as our own souls, doing those things we determine we wish to do for our good, but even on an entirely natural level, we know this not to be the case. Fortune, in terms of the events which shape our status, health and the like, can change in moments and at any time, and even those who work hard to understand and advise as experts in particular fields can be brushed aside in moments by calamity, as events often show, but there are other, deeper issues to consider. We clearly have a propensity to 'de-fault' either to behavior that is damaging or, at a deeper level, to attitudes towards perhaps both ourselves and others that is equally if not more destructive, and the problems do not end there. Christ speaks of an enemy who preys upon these very weaknesses to truly hollow us and decimate all that is of value with regards to our lives. We are, when honest, aware of the agony of this condition - the war which rages and ravages a world which should be so much more - that is the awareness behind our better aspirations and desires. We long, not to be severed from beauty, from the astonishing sweetness of all the good in life, but to see this without the slavery of corruption.

Truth and beauty are evidenced when what is expressed derives from something deeper than arrogance or pretense. Modesty, for example, is not a question of 'how much' or 'how little' is shown, as in the cartoon, but what is behind the expression itself. Perhaps a person is unclothed because of vanity, but someone can be exact in all their attire and behavior for exactly the same reason.

Working in photography with some truly remarkable people has powerfully reminded me, again and again, that what we truly want, beyond all the shouting, the machinery, the paraphernalia of what we often deem important, is something wonderful and remarkable - a true connection and enriching of each other. So often, our blindness and selfishness mars such splendor, but that is surely part of what we are here to do - to convey to each other that manner of beauty.

It's all to easy to fall into the dull entrapment of stereotypes and their hold upon us. What's needed is life which challenges us to break beyond such bonds and truly be free - to love and to be deeply loved.

The shock of the true

"One is meant to be quite able to behold beauty, online or in reality – and get on with one’s life as though nothing in particular had happened.

It is not an insult to human beauty to suggest that the matter may not be quite so simple. Indeed, it is a tribute to the power of beauty to think otherwise".

Alain De Botton - How to think more about sex.

It's something, I suspect, that happens to everyone of us - that moment when we are totally astonished by beauty. I was recently watching the amazing 'Timescapes' teaser video of time-lapse photography of the night sky - literally thousands of stars in motion - and was simply staggered at the sheer wonder of the view we have of our galaxy (which, as astronomer's have recently noted, is because we are in the 'goldilocks spot' of our neighborhood). Beauty should overwhelm us, inspire us and transport us into a place where we can only respond by seeking to exult such a marvel, but, like the view of the stars themselves over so much of our urbanized landscape, this awareness has become squashed beneath the 'noise' of the leveling-out of life, art, culture, merely becoming a grain of the milieu, the "pornification", of the whole. "The entire internet is in a sense pornographic, it is a deliverer of constant excitement which we have no innate capacity to resist, a system which leads us down paths many of which have nothing to do with our real needs. Furthermore, pornography weakens our tolerance for the kind of boredom which is vital to give our minds the space in which good ideas can emerge, the sort of creative boredom we experience in a bath or on a long train journey" (De Botton).







Back in those days when we were naked and unashamed, our beauty, our actions and words, had a very different goal. These gifts 'spoke' to the rest of creation of the glory and wonder of the creator (Genesis 2:19,20), and thereby reflected the likeness and image of the divine. Adam, in his work in Eden, discovered the very nature of the role of such beauty, and this lead him to the place where he became aware of his own need to see and share such beauty in a manner that 'spoke' back to him, not in the general fashion he had discovered, but profoundly regarding the 'shock' of what it means to be a creature made to share the divine. By entering into the sleep which allowed something to be taken from deep within him, Adam finds himself worshipping the glory that is Eve, and hence, creation is ready to begin to grow in a profound and rich fellowship and expression of that wonder.

All of this reflects the Father, Son and Spirit's ecstatic union which defines the essential nature of the Godhead, and allows us to begin to understand the profound wonder and majesty which lies behind a moment when we encounter and comprehend a moment of true beauty.

So these are the heights from which we so often fall, and fall we do - a brief encounter with the broad fare of the internet confirms only too readily De Botton's insights into how we abuse what is good, and we can all too easily follow suit, merely adding to the caricature instead of pointing to something deeper. Some, of course, say the only answer is to disconnect from it all, but Solomon is quick to remind us that is in the market place that wisdom stands, calling her children, so therein is our broken Eden, still needing the call to truly see the affection between nature and grace in spite of the agony of our fall.

The pain of beauty can still touch us, however we try to blur the image or dim the plea to go deeper, further, into a communion we so often reject. Christ, wrote Paul, is not only the author and finisher of all good things, but the one who will fill all these things with Himself, that He may indeed, be to us, all in all.

Behind beauty lies the deepest romance we can ever know - a love and truth which pursues us through life's deepest pains and death itself. May our somewhat miss-shapen brush strokes seek to point, if only feebly, in that direction.

Images: Erin. Photos by Howard.

Amidst the hurting

"And Mary took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance".   
John 12:3.


It began in my first full year working behind a camera. I was working in the studio with a model who had travelled down from London for a few days, and I noticed she didn't seem too comfortable with the images we were creating. I asked her to take a particular pose - crossing her arms in front of her chest, and she seemed to totally disconnect, as if something had been triggered by my request. I started to ask her a second time, and her eyes flashed with trauma and pain, and in a moment, she was crying, the situation clearly causing her to recall a deep anguish.

I sat beside her, allowing her to express her trouble, and when she was ready, I asked her if she could talk about it. She told me that she couldn't create the pose I'd requested, as it caused her to remember a recent violent attack by an ex-boyfriend, who had abused her after forcing her into just such a form. I allowed her to tell her story, apologized for bringing up any painful memories, and after a coffee, we continued working together over the next few days, producing some good images in the studio and in a workshop for a group of photographers.

Almost a year later, I was holding my first ever public exhibition of my work, and who should walk in but this young lady, her face a picture of delight. In the months that had past, her life had changed - she was now studying photography, and was doing a piece for this about me and my work... The day we had met had literally changed her.

Not all stories, of course, end that well. Yesterday, the young lady I was supposed to be working with called me in tears, as she had been assaulted by someone she had cared for. Over the years, I have encountered many like her who, whilst seeking to care, to love, to inspire and to share something beautiful through art, have been abused so often by the ones that should give respect, honor and support in return for the fragrance that these souls give to the world.

It is woefully easy for us to de-fault to something less than we should be, especially when we are motivated by selfishness which is expressed in a plethora of emotions or reactions to another. It is then that we can so quickly become manipulative or outright abusive, but obtaining something of true worth requires us to take a much deeper, often harder route in our relationships - one which will care, particularly when there is cost involved.

In the verses from John, Mary's costly action came from a genuine affection for Jesus, and when we seek  to do anything truly of value in life, it can only endure if we are equally motivated to give ourselves for the love of others.


In these hard pressed days, our greatest treasure is our care for one another - that is what brings genuine value, which will outlast any merely immediate forms of gain.

May we be able to give something that does not steal or crush the wonder we see in another, but encourages such wealth to flourish and shine brightly in this barbed and broken world.