22nd December 2025
Dear Crina,
As the year’s end approaches, it’s tempting to create one of those nostalgic lists. My most popular photos of the year. My favourite albums of 2025. Or even All the stupid things I’ve said and wish I hadn’t sort-of-thing. This isn’t that but, I suppose, it is a kind of reflection and a look forward.1
On Saturday evening we had our first family Christmas party before saying goodbye to one member who’s off to Wookey Hole for the festive period. Sounds like a euphemism doesn’t it? My son had made an elaborate Powerpoint quiz, each round featuring the peculiar quirks of family members. On each title slide we were allocated personal Strengths and Weaknesses. For example, mine were:
Strengths: slug extermination; apertures; bleach
Weaknesses: The Osmonds; mice; films in which women die2
Paints quite a picture doesn’t it? He’s got a knack for pigeonholing people with uncanny accuracy.
Since he was the quiz creator, he couldn’t score any points but he did have a round of his own in which he admitted to having a constantly updated Desert Island Discs playlist on Spotify. Just in case Lauren calls him to fill in for an absent celebrity, I’m guessing.
Pursuing the Desert Island Discs theme, Part 3 of his round included an unusual challenge:
As you can imagine, speculation ranged wildly from the hundreds to the hundreds of thousands. Bizarrely, my wife’s guess was within five of the correct answer (four thousand, three hundred and something).3 Freaky! When pressed, she claimed to have “worked it out”! She used to be an English teacher but none of us believed that she could have calculated the answer in her head. She excels in many things but maths isn’t one of them. A lucky guess, surely?!
My youngest was petrified that her round would expose her to mass ridicule, dredging up all manner of childhood embarrassments. Her fears were unfounded, although she did complain that one of the rounds was insufficiently personal! My eldest is a quiz obsessive and loves spending time constructing complex teasers when, frankly, he could be doing a bit more washing up. When I challenged him recently about my daily chore of emptying his cafetière (when I don’t even use the damn thing) he replied, “Yes, but it’s my only fault.” Charming.
One round featured clues written only in guitar tabs. Another involved identifying incorrectly formatted fonts. You get the idea. It was simultaneously stressful and hilarious.
“It is Christmas, Bob.”4
Apart from giving you an insight into my family dynamic, the real purpose of this letter is to acknowledge how much I’ve enjoyed and appreciated our collaboration this year and to look forward to an exciting event at the start of 2026.
When I first began writing to you, it was in a spirit of adventure linked to my recent semi-retirement. I had a bit more time on my hands. I was an exile from Instagram and keen to make some meaningful connections on Substack. It felt to me like this was where I might discover all kinds of clever, thoughtful, creative types. I was not wrong.
We connected initially out of respect for John Berger. We both enjoy making photographs alongside work that pays the bills. We have much in common. But we are also very different. Writing to you, a woman living in a different country, speaking a different language and making photographs quite unlike mine, felt like one-in-the-eye for Brexit, a denial of artificial borders. It’s become so much more than this; a genuine and sustained sharing of perspectives and a conversation conducted in images, as well as words.
Back and forth
Welcome back to those of you following our collaborative Experiența Spațiului (Experience of Space) and greetings to new reader/viewers. Our last collaborative post attempted to share several games of Photo Ping Pong that we have been playing using the
Here we are, on the cusp of a new year and the future looks bright (in parts).5
On Thursday 22nd January, my school is hosting the private view of an exhibition entitled Dialogue in the Making and, lo-and-behold, it features a pair of images from our Experiența Spațiului exchanges.
It promises to be a lovely event, made possible by our fantastic friends at Autograph gallery. The exhibition continues the following week so that members of the public and invited guests can see the work, as well as our students and colleagues in school. It’s an extension of the Visible Practice Residency, a groundbreaking project that shines a light on the creativity of art and design teachers and the work that gets made alongside students and in the gaps of busy professional and personal lives. How do we stay in touch with acts of making, when we may no longer have access to a studio or the time and money to devote to our practices?
I’m really excited to be sharing a tiny fragment of our extended visual conversations and can’t wait to see them framed and on the wall. Given that collaboration is such an important feature of a thriving school community and art department, it feels like you have become an associate member. Welcome to the team!
So much seems to have happened this year. Thank you for sharing part of your creative life with me. I’ll try to document the exhibition properly so I can show you what it looks like. Fingers crossed we’ll get to keep our framed prints after it’s all over.
My school has attempted to defend the arts in an increasingly hostile educational climate of funding cuts, the EBacc and an emphasis on STEM subjects. Now that the EBacc is finally destined for the scrap heap, maybe 2026 will be a year of renewed interest in the arts in schools. It’s unlikely that those schools that have pushed the arts to the margins will suddenly about-face. The damage has largely been done, I suspect. At least in my place of work it seems that the future looks a little brighter, at least until the next election.
I wish you a restful, joyful and creative holiday, away from the demands of a busy dental practice. Time for some flâneuse-ing and cat appreciation.
Much love to you and yours.
Your photography friend,
Jon
This letter is one of a sequence entitled Experiența Spațiului. Here are links to the others:
Experiența Spațiului - Fuzzy Borders - by Jon Nicholls
Experiența Spațiului - Cadaques - by Crina Prida
Experiența Spațiului - Formidable Encounters - by Jon Nicholls
Experiența Spațiului - Londra - by Crina Prida
Experiența Spațiului - One and one is four - by Jon Nicholls
Experiența Spațiului - More than a quantum of solace - by Jon Nicholls
Experiența Spațiului - Between the hammer and the anvil - by Jon Nicholls
These posts will always be free but, if you enjoy reading them, you can support my analogue photography habit by contributing to the film fund. All donations of whatever size are very gratefully received.
It looks like 2026 will be the year when it becomes totally impossible to tell the difference between a photograph and an AI generated image. Despite my anxiety about this state of affairs, I’m determined to get my head round some of the issues with the help of some very clever people who know lots more about AI visual literacy than I do.
In my defence, this is a family joke made at my expense. Yes, I love a thriller and women do tend to disproportionately suffer in these films. It’s a feature of the patriarchy. But I also love talky French films in which the camera hardly moves and almost no women die. I have fairly catholic tastes.
It has proved impossible to verify this precisely. Each time I search the online database I get a different number?!
Members of our family use this phrase, seemingly borrowed from an episode of The Likely Lads whenever something ridiculous happens over the festive period (although I can’t find any evidence of this precise phrase ever having been used in any episode).
First of all, let me tell you that I'd rather be subject to a quiz in your family than the third degree with my in-laws. That aside, thank you for the parallel photographic journey, I love the punch-in-the-eye to Brexit analogy! Also, the exhibition at Autograph fits our communication very well. I wish there was a way to promote the ping-pong games to a larger audience, not out of vanity, but because it is a perfect example that the world is not only a stage, but a fantastic photoland, in which dialogue exists when people leave behind the comfort zone and occasional uncertainties.
Love the insights into Will’s Xmas quiz. Worth washing up that cafetière for. Exhibition also sounds great, hope to visit.