What carried me here
These old bones
For most of my life, I never gave my hips much thought.
They simply carried me.
Up mountains.
Across beaches.
Through airports.
Around my studio.
They crouched beside children and dogs. They stood through thousands of portrait sessions. They carried cameras that often felt heavier than they were. They carried me through fifty-nine years without asking for much in return.
Only now, as every step demands more effort, do I realise how extraordinary that quiet faithfulness has been.
In a few weeks, one of those hips will be replaced.
The second will follow.
It's a strange thing to be grateful for an operation.
But I am.
Because it reminds me that these old bones have already given me so much.
My mother travelled a similar road many years ago.
Her circumstances were far harder than mine.
She was raising four children, carrying worries I can only imagine, while South Africa itself was carrying the weight of another time.
I've found myself thinking about her often.
Not with sadness.
With admiration.
I understand her courage a little better now.
Pain has a way of shrinking your world.
Some mornings the walk across the garden feels much further than it used to.
Sometimes I hear impatience in my own voice before I recognise it as pain speaking.
Even my dogs have looked at me as if to say,
"That wasn't really you."
They were right.
It wasn't.
Pain changes how we meet the world.
But it also reminds us what an extraordinary gift it is when our bodies quietly allow us to forget they exist.
As a portrait photographer, I've spent twenty years asking people to slow down long enough to notice their lives.
I didn't expect my own body to ask the same of me.
Perhaps that's all this season is.
A quiet invitation to notice.
To be grateful.
To accept help when it's offered.
To trust that being repaired isn't the same as being diminished.
In a few weeks, the camera will rest for a while.
I probably won't.
There are essays to write, photographs to think about, and a website that still has ideas waiting for it.
And, if all goes well, there will be many more years of kneeling beside children, crouching beside dogs, and making portraits that matter.
For these old bones have carried me a very long way.
And for that, I am deeply grateful.
JOHANNESBURG PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHER
One Moment. One Portrait. Forever
© 2005–2026 Bridget Corke Photography
Blairgowrie · Johannesburg · South Africa
International Master's in Portrait Photography
One of only two in Africa.