Many of us know the feeling of resolving to do things differently in our everyday life. Photographer Mary Jo Hoffman understands what it is to make a daily ritual out of that resolve. On January 1, 2012, she began a “one-year creative effort” in which she committed to capture a photo of a found object in nature and post it to her blog each day. Since then, it’s turned into a more than decade-long relationship with the world around her.
By making creativity her accountability partner, Hoffman has continued to explore the alchemy that happens when you regularly create space for stillness and awareness. She describes it as “placefulness,” or “state of peaceful and attentive engagement with the analog world.” For her, the beautiful and bewitching state of placefulness is grounded in the dailiness of ritual. Her experiences, her epiphanies, and her exquisite photography are captured throughout the pages of Still: The Art of Noticing, from which the below is excerpted.—YJ Editors
From the start, the rules for STILL were simple and explicit: found nature, minimally manipulated, photographed in natural…
