The Acclaimed Writings of
Brad Carr
Brad Carr
‘‘Nature is, and always will be, our greatest guide and teacher. Nature is the gateway to divine knowledge and wisdom, and the pathway back to our souls.’’
Creativity is Inner Alchemy
It is in this very darkness, that we find the truest and most potent of all powers here on earth. To create from the source of our greatest pain brings the ultimate liberation. By visiting these frightening places within ourselves, we learn to wield the sword of darkness and bring it forth into the light of day, forcing our demons to yield before us.
By harnessing the power of our creativity and creating from this place of truth, we become alchemists of the modern world, transmuting our emotional pain and suffering. The ability to perform such inner magic brings the ultimate sense of freedom and the very healing that we need to exist fully here on earth. It gives us the ability to create light from our darkness, and pure beauty out of the ugliness that we all have within ourselves.
‘‘Creativity has an unseen power to transform and transmute our greatest pain and suffering. By creating something beautiful from the place of our deepest struggles, we disarm our most frightening demons.’’
- Brad Carr, Creativity is Inner Alchemy
‘‘I have long believed that every place has its own spirit. If we are open, this spirit becomes a part of us.’’
- Brad Carr, The Spirit of Place
The Spirit of Place
There is a particular resonance that one feels from certain landscapes. These wild, untamed places invoke and awaken the soul, bringing forth that which is inexplicable from within the human vessel. When we take tentative steps into these sacred landscapes, we are entering a cathedral. We silently encounter the divine in the mirror of the outer world.
I have long believed that every place has its own spirit. If we are open, this spirit becomes a part of us. If we silence our minds for long enough, we feel the spirit’s whispers gently caressing our bones. It is this alluring feeling in the woodland sanctuary within that one must learn to interpret, and subsequently react to, if one is to make personally meaningful and expressive photographs that resonate deeply with another soul and awaken the kind of emotional response that every artist dreams of. This belief forms part of my personal philosophy as an artist — that we are the very landscape through which we walk. I am, therefore, not photographing trees or lakes, but parts of myself mirrored in the external world.
‘‘Mornings spent wandering amongst the trees with a camera in hand, before the world has woken, offer something of a spiritual cleansing. They are enough to make one forget about the madness of this existence and return ‘home’ to the soul of Nature. They offer, for a short while at least, an escape from the world of ego, bringing forth forgotten feelings of belonging and a deep, universal oneness that restores internal balance and harmony.’’
- Cleansing the Soul, Brad Carr, On Landscape, 2025
Photographing Feelings
In a world quickly overrun by data and machines – machines that can now apparently ‘create’ art – maybe it is time that we doubled down on what makes us human. That means excavating and exploring the worlds we have kept hidden inside our fragile hearts for so long.
‘‘I look out of the window at the world that is whizzing by.
Silhouettes of pine trees against the twilight blue sky.
These are the moments that help to reprogram my mind.’’
- Brad Carr, A New Dawn
Seeking Stillness
‘‘When all is calm in my surroundings, I can hear my truest self. I know that the voice I need to listen to is the one that is buried deep inside, behind society’s constructs, and limiting beliefs that have been passed on to me through generations and by my peers. When I am out here, in the wild places, beside Eryri’s tranquil lakes, beneath majestic mountains, with the branches of the pirouetting silver birch trees wrapping themselves around my weary body, my spirit feels a certain peace and the voice that I seek is free to speak.’’
‘‘A journey into the natural world offers great sanctuary and refuge, a place for stillness and deep reflection. When a man finds himself wandering alone on the clifftops that have been delicately shaped over millennia by the seas’ persistent chisel, what else has he to do but look back upon his own life to understand and make peace with the raging tides that carved the caves and crevasses within his internal landscape?’’
- Brad Carr, Learning to See Again
Explore Brad Carr’s
Photobooks
