Release

Release began as a self-collaboration assignment during my MA in Photography at Falmouth University. After a thirty-year career as a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot, I was medically released with PTSD. My service included years in search and rescue, operational and strategic headquarters, and deployments to the High Arctic and the Middle East. This series was taken in the days immediately following my release, when I turned to photography as a way to process the sudden quiet that followed a lifetime of structure and service.

The work follows a path of fall, purgatory, and ascension, echoing Dante’s Divine Comedy. Using chiaroscuro, selective focus, and mindful seeing, I translate emotion into form. The portraits and still lifes together create a quiet meditation on identity, resilience, and renewal, and on how one begins again after the self has been fractured and remade.

Self-portrait in full military dress uniform, eyes closed, half of face in shadow.
Self-portrait with bare torso, eyes closed, soft chiaroscuro lighting.
Photograph of a shadowed spiral staircase seen from above, wooden railing contrasting a blue-grey carpet, evoking descent and reflection.
Out-of-focus self-portrait in profile, head and bare shoulders facing left, lit with chiaroscuro that conveys quiet introspection.
Out-of-focus self-portrait in profile, head and bare shoulders facing right, lit with chiaroscuro that mirrors the preceding image and suggests quiet introspection.
Muted colour photograph of a rumpled pillow on a bed, with vertical motion blur and a faint double image, suggesting restless nights and a dreamlike surreality.
Close-up self-portrait in profile, focusing on the right ear under subdued colour and chiaroscuro light, evoking quiet attention and presence.
Macro self-portrait of the lower left face, moustache and beard softly lit in Rembrandt light, revealing texture and introspection.
Photograph of a lone boulder resting on a wide rock shelf, framed in soft light. Suggests Sisyphus’s boulder, yet grounded on a level plane that hints the struggle may be achievable, not endless.
Low-key self-portrait, head in three-quarter view with face shown for the first time. Rembrandt lighting and closed eyes convey a quiet moment of meditation and resolve.
Low-contrast photograph of a small plant growing from a crevice in a stone staircase, its vibrant green contrasting with the dull grey textured stone, symbolizing renewal.
Low-key self-portrait, tight head-on composition with face fully revealed for the first time. Eyes open under Rembrandt lighting, civilian dress shirt collar visible, conveying intensity and quiet resolve.