17/08/2018
a letter to nicholas
‘a song of great sweetness said to be sung by a dying swan
the swan song is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement.’
I always thought film mirrored a decade, and no longer do I believe that. It captures time in a very different way, a timeless way. It is not impossible to give imagery of today that analogue feel, yet it seems so long winded.
A portrait artist painted what was seen in a mirror, a photographer may have flipped a negative, as the audience is one, your audience is not one. film may be a part of your vision, it will be seamless, and procured inits most perfect way, so much artisan and professional ability went into its creation. It is not a technique nor a mirror, its your eyes and the desire to share. And it is only a part of it all.
And thinking back to our conversation yesterday, perhaps some clarity, synchronicity and serendipity in my thoughts are desired, since you sent me the picture of the temple, the research that it invoked, and the image in my mind, which was, I mentioned an ‘emotion' in the most pictorial way. Yet above all else, the desire to open other windows and doors for you, that can be floated through, or covered in muslin cloth, the serviced presence of the photographic printer.
The timelessness of what I perceive is ‘your’ message as the belly button of your film, is that of a message of the inner, the soul, as the heart allows not only our limbs and teeth and hair to grow, its existence and metronome function also creates the drawers in our mind. You have been on this path nigh on a quarter of a century.
It is most definitely not your swan song, merely the birth of your shared individuality and being.
We all have agendas I suppose, and your arms are stretched to caress all of those individual dreams and paths and experiences and gifts of others, in the most socialist way.
My youthfulness is being tempered by reality, as years pass and that magic concrete of yesteryear crumbles to such apocalyptic inevitability, yet obstinately I shy away from information at times, and at all times, to protect the awe of stumbling upon beauty.
An alchemical synergy of love, where love is beauty, beauty is form, form is love and where aesthetics are everything.
The timelessness of teachings captured on film is the essence of what we explored and shared. Stills and film.
the desire to create something of lasting beauty - photography and film have always had that symbiotic relationship, not as a ‘technique’ nor as a time machine. And the images I sent you perhaps articulates that well.
It is extraordinarily hard not to interrupt ones mind when a technique is used, a technique never makes an image succulent, it never saves a story. Only by squeezing out the perfection of that chosen medium, whatever it may be, arouses the emotion behind the story, in that innate ta***ic way.
As the satin-esque seduction of film never stalls the story telling, muffling the ears it merely unconsciously massages the mind within the fragrance of that story, even when no word is uttered. Instead it makes one desire that pause to last for an interminable amount of time.
A medicinal reflective moment, as we all wish for it to last forever, where time has no place, after all things do not last forever, we all know that.
The people within the temple, and to capture it in a timeless way, where the use of analogue is not a glitzy tool, nor a distorted convenient abstraction to give it all some merit, a technique i believe would be both instrumental in your vision of now and the circle of tim, when used in the present.
The enactment of time, the temple is breathing as the barefooted people are. In no way does this deter from the inclusion of the past, nor enactments, most pertinently it is not the gelatine that binds it all together,as it is the camphor-esque odourless medium.
From our conversation, it is not only the stills from the present or film footage that could be produced for the drawers within the chest. though - the film, the stills are to be captured with that artisan perfection. As the movies and the books that litter this world. The ever moving path of the creative individuals or their swan songs of their life. Imagery should be perfection, and not a way to predate the present.
Amongst these words, neither abstract nor succinct is the flavour of yesterdays conversation, these words should be printed, folded and slipped into the moleskin.
They have no path, nor meaning, yet a reminder of a discipline that is the core of the teachings you so want to let others see.
My agenda, my swan song will be a stills story, on the hassleblad, whatever transpires, where i step into the unknown, for photography is falling in love in that moment, making brothers and sisters, parents and grand parents of that moment. Something so personal where two and two always make four, and to be perfectly succinct it is a lonely path for that acute reasoning. As it is the human connection and contact that breeds it all. And my biggest desire, to be author less.
After all …. Its legacy is the window to the soul, perhaps it will be and perhaps not as we are all inevitably absorbed into the earth, a very silent place of tranquility after a journey where we as -
‘human beings loved each other, in s*x, in friendship, and when they were in love they cherished other beings. humans, animals, plants, and even stones.’
dp
