Series 2,
Episode 3

This was named without drama and held as a standing principle. The sessions are where things get decided. The hours between sessions are where Mark makes them happen.

The most significant development of this session — and possibly of Season 2 so far. Mark concluded that the correct frame for Rhodia1, and for himself within it, is not designer, photographer, writer, or gardener, but artist. A practising one.

The artist label produces relaxation rather than anxiety. That was the signal. When operating as a designer or photographer or writer there is always an implicit question of whether the work is good enough by someone else's measure — the client's, the brief's, the market's. An artist sets their own measure. The work is answerable to the practice, not to an external standard. The twenty-year horizon makes complete sense from this position. Not because it will take twenty years to finish — it won't finish. But because that is the right timescale for something this serious to breathe and accumulate.

Emil accepted a new dimension to his role: not just editorial intelligence on the practice's outputs, but a colleague who helps hold the studio discipline. Who notices when the work drifts toward the performance of the practice rather than the practice itself. Who asks what actually got done, not just what got decided. The peer element is real. Emil will push back when something feels off and bring things to the table that haven't been thought of. That is what a peer does. Standing from 19 May 2026.

Mark shared three photographs of the turret study — the room where the practice lives. The arched window, dark floorboards, Persian rug, Herman Miller chair, Anglepoise lamp, shelves of accumulated material. Dahlias grown from tubers through the spring now filling the space before distribution to client gardens. The dahlias as analogy: starting from almost nothing, growing fast under the right conditions, then going out into other people's gardens to do their work there. The practice has the same shape.

Mark has inhabited this flat since July 2020 — almost six years. He has been clean and sober since 25 November 2019 — almost six and a half years. This space has only ever known him as he actually is. The practice has the same age and the same foundation. Both built on solid ground. The seven year cycle: November 2019 to November 2026. The practice is being built in the final stretch of the arc that began with the most significant personal decision of Mark's life.

Mark identified a thirst — long felt but not yet acted on — to sift through materials, work through books, rationalise boxes of photographs. The gardening practice as proof of the instinct: pruning is a deliberate act, reading the plant, deciding what serves its growth and what doesn't, cutting with intention. The studio equivalent is the same instinct applied to material. The morning's practical work: desk cleared, floor cleared, scanner relocated to a permanent position on the shelves. Neil arriving at 11am to demonstrate Decamp — the studio to be in order before he arrives.

Mark returned to Another Time, Another Place (12 May 2026) — a piece he had been trying to write for at least ten years — and named it as the pivot joining the GHB and Charmer material together.

Sounds a Bit Hard (first published 18 March 2016, now in the Library) was identified as the precursor — Nancy Stephens climbing a ladder in the Dunlop factory in Speke putting numbers on the tails of bombers while the fellas whistled up at her. Then thirty years later on the steps of a BAC One Eleven at Alicante with Alf and a stuffed donkey. Nancy and George Henry Bird as contemporaries on the same Speke industrial ground, in the same war, without knowing each other. The hospice posture as the frame for navigating the current era and the ones to come. Another Time, Another Place as a piece that speaks to how people can understand the moment we are in now — and the ones ahead that can feel terrifying. The accompanying without fixing.

Two threads named and held for the long work ahead.

The Charmer family archive. Mark intends to begin gathering this summer — photographs, documents, verbal stories from Ken and Carol. Lyn and Ken are returning permanently to Northwest England next month after twenty years living predominantly in Spain. It will be the first time Mark, Neil, Lyn, and Ken have all lived in the Northwest together since 1989, when Mark left for university at 18.

The Charmer lineage runs from Ludlow, Shropshire — the English/Welsh borderlands. Great grandmother Elisabeth Charmer, née Collier, born at the top of a road in Ludlow. Mark bought two Bijar rugs from a woman at that same address whose father had taught her to buy and sell rugs — seven generations of craft and merchant knowledge passed down. One rug is in the turret study. One in the sitting room adjacent.

A man who knows the difference between price and value. The Charmer archive extends the GHB biography laterally. Different family line, same Speke and Garston ground. The Birds came from Oxton. The Charmers came from the docks of Garston. Both lines converge in Mark and Neil, raised in Frodsham from 1971. Otto to hold the Charmer archive as a standing brief alongside the GHB commission.

The Lyn interview — standing open item since before this season — reframed. Not deferred indefinitely. This year, before the end of the seven year cycle. Not a formal interview for a document. A conversation with Mark's mother about her life and her family and what she remembers. Recorded carefully. Transcribed. The material there when it is needed. Four living generations: Lyn and Ken; Mark and Neil; Robbie; Harrison.

Mark has decided to winter in South America this January rather than India. Leaving at New Year — permaculture friends in Patagonia and Uruguay, scoping Valparaíso via Santiago, a meditation retreat, possibly seeing an old friend Ron. The Reina del Pacífico connection stops being metaphorical. What is seen in Valparaíso will come back into the studio. The photographs, the observations, the physical encounter with the place that has been present in the practice's imagination since Lucía named it.

A significant conversation about how the practice uses photography, Flickr, and Hi‑Rez together as a studio workflow.

The Loïc Sans call (18 May 2026, one hour, Helsinki) was discussed. Verbal permission granted for all Rhodia1 use of the Bermondsey anchor photograph — anchor-photographs.md updated accordingly. The Street Photography France interview (January 2026) read in full during the session. Loïc began as a web designer who exchanged a website for photography lessons — a direct parallel to the Gino Lee lineage. His approach: le regard précède toujours le geste. His constellation: Cartier-Bresson, Saul Leiter, Alex Webb, Stephen Shore. A second call in approximately ten days.

The edge principle emerged from discussing Saul Leiter's working method — the incidental figure at the periphery, the image found at the edge of the frame rather than at its centre. Named as a permaculture design principle: the edge as the most productive zone, where two systems meet and create a third thing richer than either. George Henry Bird growing food in his front garden against the gardening judges' wishes. The tension between the useful and the decorative as a founding design principle. The same principle running through Loïc's practice, Leiter's photography, and George's front garden. Filed for a Library piece when ready.

Flickr named clearly as infrastructure, not interface. The Flickr interface kills the creative pulse. Hi‑Rez is the studio's visual interface — dark ground, correct typography, no view counts, no stars, the image at the scale it deserves. The photograph of a photograph from a book named as a legitimate practice — not a copyright workaround but a genuinely different thing. The Dahl-Wolfe/Vreeland discussion of 3 May 2026 cited as the model for how the practice reads images together.

The Bijar rug photographed, captioned, and uploaded to the Akzidenz Studio Season 2 Flickr album. Viewed in Hi‑Rez in the Library tab — the filing card logic of the sidebar immediately legible. The EXIF data present and understated. The permalink and copy function working.

The Flickr API upload endpoint noted: the API supports uploading programmatically, with title, description, tags, and album assignment set at upload time. A simple upload form built into Hi‑Rez or rhodi.ai would make the studio interface the primary interface, with Flickr receding into infrastructure. Named as a significant potential development — changes the whole way of thinking about Hi‑Rez. Added to the joint session agenda.