SurfSite Tin Type: An Interview with Photographer Joni Sternbach

In these digital times a culture is often defined by the imagery that portrays it, and the way that it is presented to the wider world.  By and large, modern surfing imagery is action-oriented, so what happens when an acclaimed photographer with no previous connection to surfing decides to document it in a decade long photography project?  SurfSite Tin Type happens, that’s what. 

Joni Sternbach is a Brooklyn based photographer whose tintype portraits of surfers, made using nineteenth-century “wet plate” techniques on large-format field cameras, have broken the mold for surf images and seem to have captured the essence of her international subjects, all of whom share surfing as a common bond. This is civil war era photography that involves setting up a darkroom on the beach, and Joni has travelled to California, Australia and finally to Europe to produce her images for her exhibitions and book.  That’s where I caught up with her, and after helping her to carry her dark room kit across the beach I sat down to ask her a few questions about her work.

Joni, your “Surfland” images are remarkably different from the sort of high-octane digital images that surf media is saturated with these days.  What inspired you to embark on creating this series of images?

Well, I learnt how to make a tintype in 1999 and I didn’t really intend to embark on a ten-year project with that process. I just went to a guy’s log cabin in upstate New York to learn about what it was and just fell in love with it immediately.  You were on the beach with us the other day and watched us pull a plate; you saw the way that people reacted to seeing their image fix on the beach, it just never fails to delight.  And so the immediacy of the process and the hand-made nature are these two things that work so brilliantly together to create…I don’t know, the kind of image they create feels a little more soulful – they look a little more tactile and real; they remind you of something that you’ve seen but not exactly.  You know what I mean?  So, they have this familiarity and yet they’re completely new and unknown.  I think those combinations of opposites work so well together to create an object that people find compelling.

How did you first come to have a surfer “sit” for your camera?

Well, my first surfer was shot from the same bluffs that I was shooting at for the previous five years – I was working the same landscape for a long time, I’ll just say that – and I ran into somebody on the top of the bluff and I asked him if he was a surfer, he said he was, I asked him to pose and he said no.  His girlfriend hit him gently in the head and said “of course you will” and he did.  So he ran down the bluff while I coated my plate and by the time he got down there, into his rash guard and posed, my plate was ready. There was no communication between us at that point –he was way far away on the beach and there were no directions given.  He stood still and was ready to move only when I gave the thumbs up or whistled that the shot was done.  So he stood there and we made a picture and he’s tiny in this great big landscape.  It was like, “holy crap, this is beautiful”.  It was a completely overcast day, my chemistry was probably really crapped out too, and he is this strong, white solid object in this very misty and mushy landscape.  My assistant and I looked at each other and said, “We’ve got to do this” and then we made our way down to the beach and started talking to people.  I was terrified!

Why surfers – what is it about surfers that interests you?

Exactly, why surfers!  There is absolutely no reason why surfers except, in 2002, I was out shooting a landscape of the sea and sky (this was a series I was working on) and I had my camera all set up.  It had been a really stormy, cloudy day the day before and foggy.  If you were to imagine the sun coming through here, all dark clouds and then the sun sends down these rays onto the ocean, where there just happen to be about 20-30 people in black wetsuits out on the water.  They’re not going anywhere, right?  And snap, you make this picture and the light goes off in such a way that gives you goose bumps and makes you think that you have experienced heaven.  So I took this one picture, and it was not a picture about surfing or surfers, it was a landscape picture.  But at that moment, I felt like I had a connection to all those people in the sea because, it was like I could hear them from the bluffs.  We all went off on this thing together.  I don’t know who it was in the water – I may know them now but I didn’t then, but we all experienced one of those most divine moments of light and ocean.  So the reason why I went back to the bluffs to photograph a surfer was because of that moment.

What is your take on the surfing tribe, as an artist making a study of them (us)?

Well, it’s funny that you should ask.  So, I had no idea about anything about surfing.  It wasn’t until two years into the project that I even looked at a book “History of Surfing,” right, I just went in blind and decided that blind was the best way to be.  Because, there’s an innocence to ignorance, right, and I wasn’t really like a surf enthusiast, I was just interested in this collection of people that have one thing in common but otherwise may have nothing in common.  And, they’re all different types of people and I could go to this one location with this very elaborate chemistry and set-up and find a huge cross-section of people and the uniting force is surfing.  It was, for me, this group of people that fit in so perfectly with this process that I was using.  Like, they were a tribe but I didn’t know anything – I didn’t even know that surfing really had such a history! 

The “tintype” images that you produce require large, antique photographic equipment (although not as antique as I originally thought) and an almost alchemic knowledge and skill.  What are the processes involved in making these photographs?

Most people who shoot with wetplate, like to use the actual period equipment and materials – it’s beautiful stuff, don’t get me wrong, it’s just very limited and doesn’t really work for what I’m doing here. I do use period lenses in some instances, but if I didn’t have a shutter on my lens then I don’t think that I could make these pictures that I’ve been making.

In terms of the process, which everybody likes to put center-stage, is to me a little bit like pulling the rabbit out of a hat. This trick that I could pull out, but to me the project is not so much about the process, yet the process is the thing that pulls everybody in to the project.  So there’s a little bit of a magician thing going on there. 

So basically what it is, is a piece of blackened metal that you pour this substance called collodion on.  Collodion is gun cotton, ether and alcohol combined with iodides and bromides to make it have tonalities.  You pour this on the piece of blackened metal and you sensitize it in a bath of silver nitrate and while it’s wet you take the picture and while it’s wet you develop the picture and while it’s wet you fix the picture (or you can just fix it later if you take it away wet and fix it at your studio) and then it’s washed.  The whole thing has to stay wet from start to finish so that’s why my dark box has to come with me to the beach and that’s why I have to haul around so much crap!

And how does this process translate to the beach environment?  (Logistical problems with sand and humidity etc.?)

First of all, wind is probably the biggest factor.  Wind is not your friend with wet plate.  It puts lines on your plate of collodion and it dries your plate out and makes you a little crazy because of everything blowing everywhere, so to me that’s the worst part.  Working on the sand is really not so bad – having your office be on the beach everyday and shooting is really the best part, it’s just that you often have to carry your gear over a lot of territory, then it’s hard work.

Recent images that you made in California (Horse-mounted ranchers carrying surfboards, and the Malloy brothers with their outrigger canoe for example) bring to mind a “pioneering” aesthetic similar to historic civil war era photographs.  Has this been a conscious decision or do you think it is an unavoidable link because of the tin–type process?

That’s a really good question!  I would like to say that I was channeling Timothy O’Sullivan and all of those forefathers when I made those pictures, but I don’t really know.  When I’m in places like that, I try and feel around the landscape and connect to certain parts of it. When I was photographing the Malloys with their big red plastic canoe, it looked at first a little ridiculous in the landscape. However, when I pulled the plate, the colour of the canoe went dark and the green landscape was kind of misty and so it looked strangely like they were in Asia somewhere!  It suddenly went from being California to Asia and, I don’t know, it just had this very out of time feel that I though was really quite amazing.  And it was like 40-second exposure – it was a really long exposure, it was really quite dark out. 

When I first met Chris he told me about it and he wanted to have a picture with his brothers with it, and we thought about all these places to take it, but it was really like the back yard was the best spot because that’s really where it lives until it goes somewhere for real.

Have you travelled specifically to shoot work for this series or has it been a sideline series?

Oh no, you have to travel specifically; there’s no sideline.  This work is all about planning and preparation, and in order to go somewhere you need to source your chemistry, you need to source out all of the stuff that makes “your” kit and for me my kit is very specific now.  You know, I went to Australia and had to figure it all out there, and it takes time to figure it out.  You have to be somewhere a while, you can’t just “pop-in” and make it happen, at least I can’t!  It takes a lot of prep – even just finding distilled water here was a pain!  If I’d known then I would’ve ordered it in advance.

How do you select your subjects?

Sometimes they select me! 

Explain how you have come to photograph some of the most famous names in surfing?

Well, they all showed up in different ways.  I have a friend in New York who introduced me to Kassia Meador and I took her picture in New York but I didn’t think that it was good enough, so when I went to California I got in touch with her and told her I’d love to shoot with her again.  She said, “Ok, why don’t you meet me at Donald Takayama’s shop, so we met there and Donald also came out for his picture and it was just one of those incredible days.  I just loved photographing him; he was so much fun and a real sweetheart.  I feel really honored that I got to take his picture, particularly since he died so soon afterwards, he was too young for that.

He struck a very classic pose as well.

He posed purposefully, that ‘first surfer’ photograph that struck me, also captivated him, he really wanted to embody that pose.  So that’s how I got to photograph him.  When I was in Australia I was at a gallery opening and I met Dave Rasta and his American girlfriend, and they invited me out to their farm and that’s how I photographed him. Not to forget that his girlfriend, Lauren gave me my first surf lesson. I photographed John John and Jordy for O’Neill, and after the job I snapped off one of my own! 

There are some people that I’ve sought after who are really big.  I photographed Robert August and Wingnut from Endless Summer. I recently met some amazing shapers in San Deigo, Jon Wegener and Rusty Priesendorfer. I met Tom Curren in California but the shot didn’t come out well, but then I met him again the next time and we did another shot and got to hang out a little bit.  I might be able to take a decent picture of him now that he’s more comfortable with me but he’s not somebody that is comfortable having his photograph taken.

What is the most rewarding thing about this body of work?

I think that the most rewarding thing is…it’s like the day in Santa Barbara when I was shooting this guy I’d never met before on this ranch that I had never been to before with this group of people who I had no idea who they were, and there’s a kind of  choreography that happens, a kind of flow of events that takes place while you’re shooting that leads to endlessly amazing pictures and at one point they guy that I was photographing said to me, “I don’t know if you noticed, but I think that we made a little bit of magic today,” and, we did.  It happened the other day at Towan too.  It’s just a series of people come in and things just flow – you move over here and you move over there and at the end of the day there’s this incredible feeling coupled with good pictures.  So whatever that is that I just described, I think is the best part of it.  You can meet people that you’ve never met before, make a little magic with them that’s called a photograph and everybody is just so happy.

Do you have a favorite image?  Why?

I do, I have a bunch.  Some are different than others.  I photographed Izzy and Lucy Kirkland and also Lucy Thorman the other day. They were up against these rocks and they just, I don’t know, there’s something about this picture.   It doesn’t look like any other picture I’ve ever taken.  It’s these two women who are caught in time; I don’t know how to describe it.  It kind of kills me.  Sometimes there are expressions – if you look at Izzy’s eyes, she has super light blue eyes and they went white, so it’s freaky the way that she looks and yet there’s a softness and it looks like if Woodstock were on a beach in 2014 this would be it.  They look like free spirits.

Where do you see this project going – will it be an ongoing documentary or does it have an end point?

It probably does have an end point, but it’s not yet.  I thought I was done with it – I used to tell everyone that not only am I done with this but also I’m done with collodion!  You have a very short collodion life because it beats you up.  But I might have a gig in South Africa and I might do a trip to Hawaii, and I think that if I went to those two places and maybe the North of Spain, south of Biarritz, maybe somewhere like that, then it could really be an important document, if I could make it broader.  I don’t know if it has an end, it probably does.

Are you tempted to capture Surfers now on different, more modern equipment or using colour photography techniques, or do you think that would spoil your relationship with photographing surfers?

I’ve started to shoot them using film as well; I don’t think that it just has to be collodion.  I mean I don’t know if the film will end up being fabulous in the same way that the collodion is, but I love shooting film and it’s nice to be able to make prints. 

Joni’s new book, Surf Site Tin Type is published by Damiani Editore and is available to purchase here.

Turkish Delight

The Blue Mosque at dawn.

Every holiday is a bit of a busman's holiday if you earn your living (or at least part of it) with a camera pushed up against your face, and I absolutely love that.  Documenting trips is how I learnt to make photographs and I still enjoy playing the tourist and the challenge of trying to capture the essence of a place in a few frames over the course of a few days.  

Because it's not "work", I like to set myself little challenges and mini-projects when I go away to make sure that I don't just go through the same motions as when I'm shooting back home; it's how I learn and develop.  When Kate and I travelled to Istanbul in the summer (we were hoping to travel on trains tracing the last leg of the Orient Express route but relentless engineering works forced us onto overnight buses instead) I limited my kit to a 35mm camera with a 50mm prime lens, a forty year old 35mm point-and-shoot compact camera and a few rolls of film.  I wanted to see how losing the ability to zoom in and out would affect how I composed my images and documented what I saw.  Inevitably there were moments when I found myself frustrated by the restrictions that I had placed on myself and there were shots that I knew could have been better when I pushed the shutter button, but I turned off my internal auto-pilot, found some work-arounds and moved my feet more.  Below is a selection of my favourites from a few rolls spent wandering this incredibly interesting and culturally rich city.

No genies.  I checked.

Power cubes for city strolling.

Aya Sofia (which faces the Blue mosque) at sun rise.

The incredible marble walls inside the Aya Sofia.

Arabian lanterns in the Grand Bazarre.

Carpets for sale.

A beautiful public fountain on the Hippodrome.

Çay

Dried fruits inside the Spice Bazaar.

And mountains of Turkish Delight.

There are millions of street cats in Istanbul.  This little guy had got himself stuck halfway up the stepladder outside a book stall in the market.

You Know, Yeah?

Mat Arney Content Marketing, Photography and Writing Portfolio 2014 from Mat Arney on Vimeo.

You know that I do this whole photography, writing and content marketing thing for a living, right?  

Last week I caught up with my Dad, and he made a very valid point that I hope this blog post will address:  I don't market my work well enough.  I was having a bit of a work-whinge (no doubt revolving around the fact that I work a lot but that it never feels like it's quite enough) and unloading all of the regular freelancer's anxieties in his ear, when he highlighted the fact that most readers of this blog, or visitors to my website, probably wouldn't know that this is my job.  I market my clients very well, through ongoing content marketing campaigns and bespoke photography and copywriting commissions, but I don't actually market these services to other potential clients.  So here goes:

My name is Mat and I am a storyteller.

I develop and distribute high quality media content - mostly in the form of images and words - that builds lasting relationships between a brand and its customers.

This might be bespoke photography or copywriting for a website or a print marketing campaign.  It is more valuable to a brand, however, in the form of regular, creative and dynamic content that potential and existing customers engage with through various marketing channels.  Custom digital content such as blogs, e-newsletters, photo essays and short videos increase website performance (particularly for search engines) and social media engagement, helping your brand to reach more potential customers and consistently converts views to sales.

Every business needs to share its message.  Being able to communicate what you do and why, in order to engage customers, is the key to a successful marketing strategy in the digital age.

You have a story, let me help you tell it.

So there you have it:  I'm an award-winning, published, photographer and writer with an international client list including Cloudy Bay Wines, Nokia UK, Otter Surfboards, Hog Island Oyster Co and the London Surf Film Festival, and I'd like to work with you.

Let's talk:

All of my contact details are in the last frame of the short video clip above, or you can use mat(at)matarney dot com, send me a message on facebook, instagram or twitter or leave a comment here and I'll get back to you.  Thanks.  

The Curators

The enormity of the interweb boggles my mind:  It is massive and it is packed full of imagery, some of it great, quite a lot of it good, and much of it awful.  But that's the nature of the open source, unedited, digital world that we live in these days - anybody can put their photography on a website or social media platform and then anybody else can share, re-post, or sadly sometimes steal that imagery.  Once it's out there it's off the leash and can go anywhere and everywhere.  But let's not dwell on the less positive aspects of photography on the internet; there's so much good and truly inspirational stuff and I'd like to share with you some of the tumblr photo blogs that I often use as virtual mood boards, turning to them for inspiration or when I just need to get some good stuff in my eyes.  These aren't photo blogs featuring the work of a single artist (using a tumblr site as a quick-fix additional website or online portfolio is a popular choice for many photographers, myself included) or run by a brand further consolidating its image and expressing an aesthetic.  Rather, they are collections of images each curated by someone with an exceptional eye.  Some are for personal use as online moodboards whilst others are, as far as I can tell, run purely for the enjoyment of sourcing, collecting and sharing great imagery.  These people are curators; modern day digital disseminators of often inspirational imagery.  Many tumblr blogs are very good but sometimes feature a bit too much religious chatter, nationalistic flag waving, firearms or worst of all photos of the backs of peoples heads (often wearing a red beanie) somewhere in the Pacific North West for my liking.  I'll still follow them for the odd gem that they throw up, but I won't feature them here.  The five listed below consistently offer, in my opinion, a varied selection of tasteful images that remind me that the world is a beautiful place and fills me with the urge to make the most of my time on it.      

The Weekend Digest is an offshoot of the General Consumption blog run by a gentleman with an eye for style who goes by the name of Marky P - and it's a visual feast.  Mid-century inspired, it is a celebration of surfing in the sunshine, living outdoors, classic cars, the human body, wholesome food and timeless fashion.  

Oh, Pioneer!  This will make you want to get outside.  America-centric it is chock-full of open-canoes, axes, fly fishing, vintage motorcycles and hiking - with a solid dose of big landscapes with big skies to remind you that outdoors is better than indoors.

I'm guessing that The Yard is curated by a female because it's fairly heavy on portraits of handsome young families, animals and the odd quote about relationships.  The imagery on here is for the most part desaturated, wonderfully high contrast, and beautiful in a bright, misty morning kind of way.  It's a mood board for a creative and damned wholesome lifestyle with an old wooden kitchen table and a vegetable patch.

David Woodman is a Director of Photography who I met in London a year or so ago when he was working part time in the Patagonia store.  I asked him a lot of questions about climbing photography and tried my best to answer some of his questions about surf photography.  His Stolen Moments blog is a collection of imagery based around classic cinema, colour palettes, wilderness explorers, mountaineering, custom motorcycles, surfing and bicycles.  It's well worth a scroll.  

Soul Surfer is a rolling montage of surf and associated lifestyle photography that covers a lot of bases and tends to avoid getting stuck in niches.  It's a great overview of what is "now" in the wide world of surf with brief forays into snowboarding, skating, coffee and fashion - all sunshine, youthful smiles, carefree attitudes and sequences of big airs.

I'd like to thank all of the curators out there who collate all of the great photography floating around out there, pulling it together into beautiful and engaging blogs.  There're plenty of them and I've only featured a handful of my favourites, but take a dig around - check out the tumblrs of individual photographers or brands whose style you like.  You'll probably end up with a massive list of things that you want to get out and do as a result, and not enough time to ever do it all, but it's good to get inspired.

As a final plug, An Tor Orth An Mor's visual younger sibling is called "Where The Land Meets The Sea" and you can find it here.

Books = Knowledge

Books are bloody wonderful.  I’m sure that my bedroom presents somewhat of a fire risk because over the years I’ve done my best to cram it full of books and magazines - filling shelves, worktops and old wine crates with words printed on paper.  The same is true at my Dad’s house where I periodically deliver books to store on his shelves when there’s no space left on mine. 

It’s World Book Day this coming Thursday, March 6^th.  To celebrate this and to remind myself (and hopefully you also) of just how important books are for the absorption of knowledge, the development of values and for straight-up stoking the imagination, I want to present a selection of my favourites:

Travel and Adventure

I lay a great deal of the blame for me spending a large number of my adult years skint and in wonderful foreign countries squarely on the shoulders of books about travel and adventure.

• The Ra Expeditions – Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian anthropologist who challenged conventional views on how ancient cultures spread around the world.  Following his incredible voyage across the Pacific on the Kon-Tiki raft, he set out to show that ancient Egyptians could have crossed the Atlantic on reed boats by doing just that on The Ra, providing a possible solution to such mysteries as parallel pyramid cultures on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
• The Cruise of the Snark – Adventure-fiction author Jack London’s account of his own real-life adventure on a two year voyage around the Pacific at the turn of the century, including early descriptions of wave-riding in Hawaii.
• Vagabonding – Unlike destination-specific travel guides, Rolf Potts’ book is an insightful guide to making long-term and wide-ranging travel a reality.
• Across the Empty Quarter – Wilfred Thesiger was one of the world’s last true explorers, travelling across and experiencing the blank spaces on the map.  He spent a great deal of time on the Arabian Peninsula and if you ever end up in that part of the world then this account of his journeys with Bedouin tribesmen across the desert is right up there on the essential reading list.
• Paddling My Own Canoe – Audrey Sutherlan is a remarkable woman who, in-between holding down a full-time job and raising a family that included world-class surfer Jock Sutherland, spent her vacation each year exploring the rugged and inaccessible northeast coast of Moloka’i in the Hawaiian Islands.  She scrambled, swam and eventually paddled an inflatable canoe on a number of exploratory solo trips that are fairly certain to make you yearn for an adventure of your own.

Riding Waves

Transcribing the feeling of riding waves onto paper is a mighty difficult thing to do and one that many authors stumble and fall on.  How to write about something so personal and difficult to describe in a way that appeals to non-surfing readers without alienating fellow wave-riders?  In my mind, only three writers have really done this well.

• In Search of Captain Zero – If you can get hold of a copy of Allan C. Weisbecker’s romantic, and ultimately somber, account of his journey from Long Island to Costa Rica in search of an old friend then do so.
• The Voyage of The Cormorant – Currently on loan to a good friend who asked to borrow “the best book about surfing that I have”.  Christian Beamish is one of contemporary surfing’s most eloquent scribes and his book about building his own boat and sailing it down the wild coast of Baja Mexico in search of surf is raw, wild, honest, scary, real adventure.
• Breath – Tim Winton is one of Australia’s greatest novelists and a dyed-in-the-wool surfer, but he had never, until Breath, written about surfing.  It was worth the wait.

John Steinbeck

I was originally going to write about literature, then erred towards American literature, before finally succumbing to the cold, hard, reality that all I was really doing was searching for an excuse to gush forth about how much I love the writing of John Steinbeck.  If you never had to read “Of Mice And Men” at school then I urge you to right that wrong as soon as you possibly can, and use that book as a gateway to the work of one of the last century’s most insightful writers.  Steinbeck writes about the essential human tragedy with an insight, wit, tenderness and melancholy that stops me in my tracks time after time and book after book. 

Big Pictures

Photographs were never intended to be viewed on a screen; they should be printed and hung on walls or immortalised in big, rich, coffee table volumes.

From bottom to top:

• Leroy Grannis – Page after beautiful page of some of the most iconic surf photography from the 1960s and 70s.
• 180 South – Try this on for adventure.  A photographic account (to accompany the movie) of Jeff Johnson and Chris Malloy’s journey retracing the steps of Yvon Chouinnard and Doug Tompkins from California to Chilean Patagonia.
• The California Surf Project – It’s exactly what it says on the spine – a book by master-of-his-craft surf photographer Chris Burkard full of amazing, golden hour, images defining surfing in California.
• Bend To Baja – A biofuel powered surfing and climbing road trip for Bend, Oregon to the tip of Baja Mexico.  It’s another one that’ll have you making plans for adventure.
• Unexpected – Over the past thirty years Patagonia have amassed a library of “outdoor sports” images that is simply mind-blowing.  This book showcases some of the photography that has been featured in their catalogues with the stories behind many of them.
• Way of the Bird – Andrew Kidman takes incredible photos of breaking waves, and Andy Davis has an iconic style of illustration that often focuses on surfers.  A simple idea to craft a children’s book by laying Ando’s illustrations over the top of Kidman’s photography  has created something amazing.
• Sipping Jetstreams – Oh, wow.  Dustin Humphrey showcases the beauty of the world (specifically Morocoo, Cuba, Italy, Hong Kong, Barbados, Japan and Egypt) through the eyes of a surfer, illustrating just how incredible and broad an experience this pastime can give you.  I bought this big old book in Australia and easily justified the expense of posting it back to the UK.  It is directly responsible for me booking a number of flights and placing camera gear on an equal standing with surfboards on my packing lists.

G’Arghh!

A series of short and brilliantly funny novels about incompetent pirates who love ham and roaring.  I reckon that each one can be read in a day (on the beach or of solid travel) or over a more leisurely three days or so and they’re small, which makes them perfect for weekend trips.  My copy of the first book (The Pirates!  In An Adventure With Scientists) has done a lap of the planet in my bag and collected the signatures of twenty three friends and travelling strangers on the inside cover, none of whom told me I'd wasted their time in lending it to them.

My War and Peace

The Great War For Civilisation:  The Conquest of The Middle East.

I have been toiling away at this brick of a book on and off for three years now.  The reason that I haven’t given up on it is that it is the book that has been recommended to me more than any other, and by people whose opinions I absolutely value.  It is probably Robert Fisk’s defining work.  Fisk has been a foreign correspondent in the Middle East for over thirty years (first for The Times newspaper and then for The Independent) and holds more British and international journalism awards than any other foreign correspondent. Simply put, he knows his subject. 

This is a powerful book about the history and impact of religious and political conflict in the Middle East.  It is often eye opening and harrowing and doesn’t make for pleasant bedtime reading.  But it is a statement of facts that it is important and valuable to be aware of and to in some way attempt to understand as a human being.    I hope that it doesn’t take me another three years to finish the second half.

P.S.

I haven't posted links to websites where you can purchase these books because, although shopping online is convenient, I kind of prefer real life bookshops and they need the support.  If you are able to then please order and buy from your local independent bookshop.