One of the most unexpected developments in the studio over the past couple of years has been just how much time I've spent writing. For me, writing has always been a constant pleasure, if occasionally a little self-indulgent, allowing me to explore thoughts and experiences while following wherever they choose to lead.

More recently, however, it has become something quite different.

For the first time, I have been able to fully dissect my photographic practice, examining not only how the work is made, but why. The process has proved both overwhelming and invigorating.

Many of you first joined me through the artist residency programme and community projects, but over the past few months I have been bringing to completion something that sits quietly behind the images: a manuscript exploring the ideas, experiments and physical processes that have shaped my practice over the last forty years.

The manuscript is now approaching 120 pages and has turned out to be every bit as demanding as many of my past projects.

In some ways, perhaps even more so. It has forced me to question ideas I've carried instinctively for decades and to find language for things that have always felt easier to demonstrate than explain.

Recently I have been fortunate to receive thoughtful feedback from curators and editors who have followed my practice over a number of years. Their insight and guidance have been invaluable, helping reshape the manuscript into something stronger, clearer and, I hope, more generous to the reader.

For now, I'm deliberately keeping most of it private. I'd like the finished publication to arrive as a complete work rather than appearing online chapter by chapter. Instead, I simply wanted to share a few photographs from the process.

Most importantly, I wanted to say thank you.

Your support here has given me something increasingly rare: the time to think slowly. Not simply to produce new work, but to reflect on why the work exists in the first place. That is an extraordinary gift for an artist, and one I do not take for granted.

I hope that, when this manuscript finally finds its way into the world, you'll recognise your own part in making it possible.

Thank you for being here.

Alexander