Returning

Like a wave back and forth, returning home, as I laid on my yoga mat for the first time in over 5 weeks, listening to the words magnificent things happen at the Ocean, I reflected back on a wonderful journey. A journey that was indeed surrounded by the Ocean, no matter where one is in Sulawesi the sound of the tide is never too far away, as are the calls of hello Mrs, hello Mr from delightful faces, now I blend in again with the anonymity of a city, and am able to sit and think about what the magnificent Ocean has in store for me now, what will it bring me on the tide and in return what do I give it to take away to another place. Dreams fulfilled of energy and rituals now I have to think carefully of how to whisper the journey to give it justice of all that it was to show it in its glory of an enigmatic and marvellous time and place that it was. Sulawesi, all the way from Manado to Makassar in 36 days-thank you.

First image made from Pulau Bunaken, second image Manado, first few days of the journey.

Gone Fishing

It's that time of year again when film in bag off I go in search of adventure and  something new to learn.  This time off to the depths of Sulawesi, Indonesia, its shape is what first attracted me to it, the thought of all that tectonic energy in that region building up to create such a bizarre shaped island was not to be resisted.  I don't know what awaits me, I had a dream of rituals, effigies of the dead, houses shaped like boats surrounded by volcanoes, with small creatures; their eyes bigger than their brains eating grasshoppers and crickets in a frenzy of bliss until the sun rises and the rotation of a new day begins.   A new day, a new beginning, and time for reflection on what was what might have been and what might be, goodbye to Kuala Lumpur for just a while, I will whisper it all to you on my return.

Facing the Future

Facing the Future an open photographic show at the Elysium Artspace, Swansea, opening on the11^th July 2009.  I am happy that my work Kali Yuga will be showing within the exhibition, you can view some of this work at a previous entry on this blog back on May 13^th 09.  What interested me about this exhibition was the thought of change but from so many different angles, not just from social and climatic prospects but also that of the future of photography itself.  What is photography going to do next or indeed what is it turning into?  Is photography under threat like an animal fighting against extinction, what does this say about our world now?  It will be interesting to see what comes out of the debate taking place at Rhubarb on the 30^th of July: “Photography is Dead.”  Maybe as I seem to be repeating this issue many times of late, but maybe photography will return to its origins, or at least this is what I myself am in hope of, the world is round and continues to turn again and again.  To quote Black Elk; a holy Oglala Sioux; “You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, because the Power of the World always works in circles……. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were.  The life of man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything.”    Maybe for photography it is the same, a rotation and we are starting our return to beginnings.        Facing the Future continues until the 8^th of August 2009.      permission has been granted to post their flyer on this blog.

Re-Tracing Steps

I first arrived in Hong Kong on the 16^th of May 1994.  I was tired and penniless after traveling across Russia, Siberia and Mongolia on the Trans Siberian Express, and then through China on public transport.

I stayed in Hong Kong for a year and a half; it was here I met my Husband a fellow traveler, and many dear friends.  Re-tracing Steps looks at my return to Hong Kong in 2007, after thirteen and half years, and now made into a hand-stitched book depicting 18 black and white images.  Going back to a place after a long time is a strange kind of experience, memories re-traced maybe one circle completed and a new one begins.  I think sometimes we have to move backwards to again move forward.    

Re-Tracing Steps first edition of 100, and was completed on the 01.07.09, 12 years on from hand over and is available for orders.

 

Finding Balance

View over Mont Kiara, Kuala Lumpur, the first image made roughly 14 months before the second image.

When did you last

            Raise your head and look

            Look look look up

 

                        To the sky.

 

She saws above me

            High so high

Show me what you know

With your wings

 

As I look to full spaces

I see emptiness

 

Man gets tired

                        But spirit is free

 

Maybe what the spirit is, the man can be.

Nicola Zammit

A Question

Recently I was asked a question by a Malaysian who had visited the Editorial Photography degree show at Brighton University UK: “What do landscapes and pictures of urban decay have to do with editorial?”

To try and answer, when we look at the very nature of photography, it is a mirror and at the same time, a window; a look within and an external glance.  The word editorial can be explained as ‘expressing the opinions of its owner or maker.’  So putting the two together; Editorial and Photography, can mean we can conceptualise about anything in a photographic form, as long as we are expressing our opinions, it can still be ‘editorial,’ a look, a story, a mood of ourselves and of our world.

Urban decay is a reflection of our societies, of how we are living indeed a metaphor into our lives or how we are treating the world.  We could look at it with an even deeper meaning of a look to inside our bodies with meanings of what modern society brings to that.

Landscapes remain encoded with the language of painting, however more often than not the land today is manufactured by human activity and thus again is telling a story of our societies.  For a prime example of this we only need to look at Martin Parr’s ‘New Brighton,’ made in 1984.  Landscapes today are more often than not made in reference to what the land signifies in a cultural context and not necessarily a natural context such as in the work of Ansel Adams.

Today I don’t think we need to pigeon hole our genres of photography so much, as they seem to criss-cross over like colourful threads, and why not?

Maybe in the West photographers have found more confidence in their practise to experiment with ideas and push boundaries, to have faith in their voice and take joy in taking a leap forward sometimes into the unknown of how their work will be received.

We have to read the symbolic aspects of the image not just the literal; Diane Arbus called it “The endlessly seductive puzzle of sight.”

If we look at the work of Lee Friedlander, it goes so much further than the image itself, posing larger statements about contemporary America.  Irvin Penn’s images transformed the most banal of objects into something different even something extraordinary.

So as far as ‘editorial’ and what it might mean, maybe we have to open our hearts and minds to different ways of seeing, and how we voice our opinions through a photographic image.

 

The image above was taken whilst studying at Brighton University and is titled ‘Erode.’

I Dreamt of Sugimoto

He came to me from across the sea’s, speaking of origins.  “Is it possible to visualise the sea as primitive man once saw it, in its original pristine state?” he asked.

As I searched the shore that I stood upon with a camera as old as myself, film delicately loaded around a spool within, I looked               I watched            I waited.    

I saw much; I saw a rhythm, an ebb and flow, forwards and backwards.  I imagined what the first man might have thought with his first sight of what was before me, and I felt that presence, I felt a time of return, a time to start to move backwards.