^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 11 September 2020].}

Last week I submitted some of my photographs to issue #149 of Shots Magazine. The theme for the issue is open, so work on any subject can be considered.

This was one of the images I submitted, though the version I sent through was black and white as the magazine is printed that way.

I took this photo of the Church of St Peter and St Paul, the Appledore Parish Church, in Kent on 20 June 2016. It was taken mere days before the referendum on Britain leaving the European Union.

A short walk around the town revealed posters, placards and flyers proclaiming many of the town's residents as proud Leave supporters. Conversations overheard while we ate at The Black Lion confirmed we were in prime Leave territory.

Fast forward four years and the UK has left the EU, but we're still figuring out what that means.

About five months after the UK referendum, Donald Trump was elected.

The passing of time since then has revealed the world to me as seemingly the inverse of what I had believed and hoped it to be.

I felt we were moving forward as a global population. But since 2016, I feel like we've gone backwards in every way except time. Honesty, compassion, empathy, rationality, sanity and logic all seem at an all-time low around the world right now. At least compared to what I've seen in my lifetime.

Though gender and racial equality has made leaps and bounds over time, it feels like notions of equality are bending back into shapes of the past.

Two steps forward. One step back.

Or, more accurately, two steps forward, three steps backwards, another two, another two, another one for good measure...

I often feel like I'm staring at a weirdly inverted, sideshow-mirror-reflection of the world I thought I knew.

Though I've (perhaps foolishly) not 100% discounted the thought of having children, I've seen so much in the past four years to make me thankful for not having children up to this point. And fearful of what they might face if I were to have any.

On a day when everything feels alternately raw and jagged or dull and numb, this photo feels like a metaphor for the disorientation I've been feeling more and more lately. But perhaps it appears calmer than my feelings.