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When he first ventured out into the darkness of the Yorkshire Dales 25 years ago, John Arnison’s only goal was to find a photographic style that people would immediately know was his.
Driving for nearly 40 miles from his home in Leeds to Malham, North Yorkshire in the dead of night, John didn’t realise that he was starting a project that would continue for another quarter of a century, and shape the rest of his life.
“A lot of the best photographers’ works have their own look, and I needed mine,” said Arnison. “I wanted to come up with something and I used to do caving when I was younger and I knew I could do something really striking by taking photos outside the same as they do in caves.”
For Arnison, who has experienced depression since he was in his early teens, what began as a challenge to find a new creative direction quickly became an escape from a world he often struggles to understand or stay afloat in.
“I think of these photos as a balm for the soul,” said Arnison. “I suffered from depression ever since I started failing at school and I couldn’t understand why I was failing. I didn’t know what I wasn’t getting that everyone else was and I just didn’t understand it. I came from a very academic family and it was hard for people who were very academic to understand me.”
Arnison was given his first camera when he was nine years old as a gift from his parents, a year before finding out he was severely dyslexic. After leaving school at 15 he was inspired by the work of newspaper photojournalists such as the Guardian’s Denis Thorpe to pursue a career in pictures, beginning by working in Fleet Street darkrooms and eventually starting a darkroom of his own in Leeds, which has become a hub for a thriving community of northern photographers.
“I think taking pictures has kept me going, and I think the waterfalls in particular have saved me,” said Arnison, who also lives with anxiety and ADHD. “I find it so healing outside. I don’t always get people, I find them difficult to understand, but nature and photography are honest and straightforward. I find walking through a busy city quite worrying, but going out into the countryside at night alone, I love it. It’s just me and the owls.”
In the past decade and a half, Arnison has taken more than 150 photos, venturing alone, save for a couple of occasions that necessitated bringing a friend with a walkie-talkie to help with the more complex subjects. He has travelled all over the north photographing waterfalls, including in Yorkshire, Teesside and Cumbria, and has hopes to capture some in Scotland in the next few years.
“It’s so cathartic at every stage, researching the waterfalls, driving to them, spending hours getting this right. It just allows me to focus on what’s outside my head,” Arnison says. “When you’re out in the pitch black you can’t think of anything else, good or bad. You very much have to be in the moment.”
So precious to Arnison is his work that he keeps all of the negatives in a fireproof case in his home, saying that “if anything happened to those, I couldn’t recreate them. I could photograph them again, but it wouldn’t be the same, they’re so precious to me.”
Arnison has no plans to retire, claiming that at 63 he feels the same as he did at 20, but admits that “there’s going to be a time when I can’t keep trampling over moors and up mounds and things in the dark by myself.” He hopes to publish his work as a book, possibly accompanied by poetry from northern writers.
“I’d love to release a book of my photos to be honest,” said Arnison. “If I could see my work in print … if anyone could look at it and take something helpful from it, then I’d feel really proud. It’s always been about the process of taking them for me, but if anyone could relate to them, then that would be amazing as well.”
