Seeing The Soul in The Ordinary

A Mini Photo Zine

This week I found myself on the literary road again - this time to London to meet the new tranche of Royal Literary Fund Fellows and just to simply meet up with most of the rest of the RLF team. Sadly I had to cancel one of my meditation classes to be on the road, and I was so tired after Hay Literature Festival the previous week I decided for once not to carry a camera. Since I got my new camera last year this is a relatively unknown phenomenon. I love that thing, and have barely used my phone to take a photo since I got it - computational phone photography just cannot compare to a decent camera. Making photos nourishes the poetic part of my soul when I’m so busy I can’t get meaningful writing time in. But I was trying to cut down on weight in my bag - so no camera. Of course what should happen but my eye keeps seeing angles, shapes, lines, shadows, art in the ordinary and infrastructure - so I wondered if I could make the phone work for me.

Here are four photographs as a kind of linked mini zine - the link being my inner eye seeing the soul of the ordinary. I’ll post them without further comment for your inner artist to complete by your seeing.

And as a bonus if there are any fellow Deadheads here:
I was on the train back from London travelling home to the north - and to support my journey I was listening to the most recent Deadcast episode on my headphones. While I’m usually not a fan of Ai images thought I’d try and create an appropriate Stealie for deadphone listening.

It turned out very well - So thought I’d do a community share for any head who would like to grab it to include in some cassette art or some such…

Deadphones by John Siddique

All photos © John Siddique 2025
Camera - iphone 12 pro max
Don’t forget to meditate.

Bless up
John