Early on the long journey of David Williams’ passage as a photographer, he captured a remarkable image of an infant child.

She is walking in a field of fresh snow. The white blanket of snow, hardly disturbed, occupies most of the photograph. The infant teeters towards the edge of the image. Here, placed obliquely in the topmost left corner of the photograph, the child seems to stumble out of the frame. Arms spread, for balance, feet lost in the deep snow, this tiny figure careens into an uncertain future.

The child is wrapped in a dark coat and capped in a woollen bonnet. For all this warming protection the notion of a solitary, fragile, infant child is replete. Yet, this tiny figure seems compelled to move on, driven by intuition and perhaps a sense of wonder.

This is a strange and fascinating image. It might be construed as comic were it not for the emotional, even poignant, connotations of the narrative. Surely, these are first steps in a life's journey. These steps exist in a bewildering, whitened landscape devoid of signposts and markers. Here, at this base level, everything is contingent, and everything is possible.

Williams took this photograph in 1984. It was part of a commissioned project from the St Margaret's Girls School in Edinburgh, a programme developed in collaboration with the Scottish Arts Council. He was appointed artist-in-residence in the school, and this role was acknowledgement of his newly chosen vocation as a photographer: a decision that tempered his career as an established musician. It might be said that, like the infant child in his photograph, Williams was feeling his way as a photographic artist. His path was hesitant and intuitive, a wide-eyed and tentative experiment with the potentials of the camera.