I've always strongly thought that photography is the purest way of gaining access to another person's perceptions and thoughts. The mind's eye is so deep and personal and you can't ever fully find all of it; just like everything else visual consciousness isn't confined to a unitary space.
I took these two shots in the height of last summer, although it feels like winter, and on the same camera, but with two different types of films. What happens when your medium skews (inadvertent or not) your thoughts? Have I skewed your perception of my mind's eye because I've given away something conceptual to work with? I don't really know, to be honest, but they're still mine and I hope not.
and we tried to trap it but it was always changing
so we strained ourselves
we took what we could and ran
but the wind was pulling
the chill in the glass was in us but we couldn't tell
you made a note of it on the fridge
but now it was all gone
and so were we.
The honey falling off the edge of the table is one of my favourite cinematic moments. I really appreciate moments of film that utilise the simplest of concepts to let you pinpoint significant instances of amazing auteurism; it's a viscera that's almost tactile, and it's even better when it resonates and builds in you long after you've finished watching. When film and art and literature converge so nicely I think it's impossible not to be electrified.
The printed poem is by E.E Cummings. More of him soon. The other is my response, and a reserved plunge into publishing my work with you!
I've been down in Gippsland for the past few days staying at my family's house, something I haven't done for years. I'd forgotten so many things; the smell of the water when it comes out of the tap and how you can shower with the window open and not worry about anyone seeing you, the hot windy days that seamlessly turn into hot windy nights, the gutter of the chickens at dusk. Just looking up and being able to see the stars.
My Nanna leaves the key to the house on a hook next to the door. It's funny how the memory jogs itself back to those perceptions and feelings you first felt when you were younger and didn't know what was coming even though you've changed so much. When I get worried about all the things I have to do and all the things I want to do I hope I can just think back to this snap of time, when everything felt slow and innocent in conviction like it was when I was little and everything superfluous was just that.
I've become enamoured with the photography of Albert Tucker, having visited Heide twice in the past month to see their 30-year retrospective. It's optimistic and warm and represents everything John and Sunday Reed and the Heide Circle were about. Every time I'm there I imagine their existence where I stand and how amazing it would've been to observe; all the inspiration and passion and feeling and love for art, and for one another. You should visit too.
I've become enamoured with the photography of Albert Tucker, having visited Heide twice in the past month to see their 30-year retrospective. It's optimistic and warm and represents everything John and Sunday Reed and the Heide Circle were about. Every time I'm there I imagine their existence where I stand and how amazing it would've been to observe; all the inspiration and passion and feeling and love for art, and for one another. You should visit too.
‘Our teens are the age of trial and error, experimenting wildly with everything that comes our way…goaded by a legitimate sense that we have all the time in the world. In our 20s the stakes are higher as we assess more hard-core stuff like careers and life partners; we sample several of each and dispense with them with all the reckless abandon of knowing there's more where they came from. We get to work out who we love…we're encouraged to travel. We run through life breathless and mildly panicked as the finish line edges into view. Somewhere in between we decide who we are.’
I think about this concept a lot. Mostly, where and how these defined periods of individual existence came to fruition…and why we follow them. It’s the truth of reality and contains too many questions without answers, too many ifs and buts, to be fully answerable. Yet for something so intangible we still sit right in its essence.
Is it possible to decide who you are? Profound determinations or not, it is the movement of the ever-present that both confounds and excites the individual. I’m not even sure if that is a static idea in itself, or if it’s even static in my mind. Weeks away from my twentieth birthday in the year that I finish my undergraduate degree and choose a career to set in motion and influence the rest of my life, the feeling of an innate sense of freedom from time will probably, at some point, become a hastened pace. A simple change of date – inevitable, assured – has this power. It’s daunting, exciting, indeed breathless; uncontrollable like so many things and just human.
So here leaves me a space to narrate a little bit of everything – my creative ideas, my inspiration and adventures – and to navigate my way through assorted motives and imagination, or something. Perhaps it’s a romanticised beginning of sorts, or an attempt to vaguely construct tangible meaning in the eye of the storm. Maybe I’ll look back on it as mediocre, or even a mild panic. But it won’t be forgettable in my mind.
