Journey through the rain.

Images made in Genting, Malaysia, from the series 'Souvenirs'

Beginnings and Endings.

Beginnings and Endings, where do we start and where do we finish, is there a distinction between the two, or are we contained in ever decreasing circles, like ripples from raindrops falling gently on the water.

This image comes from a body of work titled 'Souvenirs.' I wanted to capture ‘spirit of place,’ or at least what I witnessed, how I have seen and felt it. I wanted to capture the details under the surface of a rapidly changing continent. To make permanent to that which is changing, before it becomes lost. Moments kept forever although maybe not to be seen again within the place, but to be seen within the photograph.
It’s about my desire for simplicity, something that is often forgotten or overlooked in our complex lives overloaded with images.
Placing images together as diptyches is an invitation to the narrative, to an even deeper meaning. In our world inundated by visual imagery, our ability to take in more than one image at a time has become innate; in fact our attention span demands it. The rapid response of our eyes and brains struggles to make sense of a spiralling modern world. These images create a visual dialogue of their own, a series of visual poems, riffs or a mood, place, light, landscape or gesture.
Still photographs resist that impulse of speed. They force the viewer to stop, look, think, meditate and hopefully question. They make us stop and isolate a slice of life, exploring its details.
I am striving to show the beauty in what I see, of what I have witnessed, and the visual noise I encounter everyday in an ever-changing landscape.

Images made in Kep: Cambodia and Hat Yai: Thailand. From the series "Souvenirs"

108 steps; the final concentration

Before I walked along this shore, my mind was on a trampoline; jumping. These 108 steps brought calm, I felt energized, I saw and heard things better, I became focused and concentrated. I felt I could just sit down here and stay, no returning to where I had come from. There was no-body else there apart from me and a few goats, but there was no loneliness as I laughed at myself.

"Reality lay on the other side of the visible. But now his eyes lingered on the visible and he saught his place in this world. He did not seek reality; his goal was not on any other side. The world was beautiful when looked at in this way- without seeking, so simple, so childlike. The moon and the stars were beautiful, the brook, the shore, the forest and rock, the goat and the golden beetle, the flower and the butterfly were beautiful." Hermenn Hesse; 'Siddhartha'

Then I wandered back to the place where I had come, to someone sat waiting for me.

Images made in Kuta, Lombok, Indonesia

108 steps; 4 meditations on.

Whenever I fall at your feet

i do so

in humble gratitude.

Images made in Kuta, Lombok, Indonesia.

fotovisura grants for grabs

108 steps

1 roll of film, 108 steps along the shoreline at Kuta, Lombok, Indonesia. 108 is the same number of beads on a japa mala, the string of beads that are used to aid in staying focused in deep meditation. The number 108 is meant to be held as the most auspicious number, the number one symbolizing beginnings and overcoming ignorance. Zero represents emptiness and the number 8 infinite energy. Also the numbers add up to 9, a number representing balance, one only has to think of a tripod, to imagine balance, three three's equals to nine giving supreme balance.
108 steps; to help remain focused on the vision of the ocean, stopping every few steps to make another image, 12 images made in all. My concentration was singled onto the ocean, the waves, the light on the water, how it would change in a matter of seconds. How it was ever changing but always there in front of me, partly gentle, partly roaring in the distance showing its manifested greatness and energy. A gloriously concentrated 108 steps, 12 images to hold forever those moments.
Here are the first four images.

Made in Kuta Lombok; Indonesia 2010.

one- the triangle

The Yogi sees life as a triangle, starting with birth, up one side of the triangle is growth to the top we reach youth, down the other side is change, into old age and decay, ending in death. Along the bottom edge is life hereafter, leading back again to birth. As the river begins from the rain clouds and returns to the rain clouds, do we also return again and again? Sometimes I wonder where a feeling came from, an impression in my subconscious mind, sometimes too vague and sometimes too strong to have been a recent feeling, a snippet of knowledge from the past reawakens within me. I feel the past is there, within the present moment.
"When man realizes that the immortal self is identical with the supreme self or God, what, then, is death and where is fear? The one theme of the Vedanta philosophy is the search after the unity of the individual self with the universal self or God. When this unity is achieved, no fear or death can remain." Swami Vishnu-devananda - the complete illustrated book of yoga.

The mind is like the river, turbulent, only when it is still, we can see clearly to the bottom, or to one's own true nature.

It is that time again that we call summer, a sense of freedom manifests, and I'm off again wandering, pack on back, camera in hand. Maybe to try to make the waves of my mind stiller! This year with my husband we are off to Lombok, Indonesia and the surrounding area, I want to continue my work of looking at the ocean and dwellings, a body of work that was started last year in Sulawesi- 'going back to the start.' You can view some of this work in a previous entry on this blog. Then back to the UK to spend some time with my Mum. So no blog posts for the next 6 weeks, I will indeed share on my return home to Malaysia.
For now, have wonderful summers, may the long time sun shine on one and all,
Om Shanti 'Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu' may all beings be peaceful.

image made at Cuckmere Haven UK, with appropriated image.