Saturday, May 2, 2009

To be in not to be.


The publication of new sequences on this blog yesterday has resulted in numerous responses of fervent and loyal blog readers.
With comments but also with e-mails.
Very encouraging in the perspective of the soon to publish photo book of the sequences.


One sequence in particular triggered a response that is very interesting.
It was this sequence:



And the response was:
I looked at the photos on your blog. They are all wonderful! But I particularly like the one of your shadow on the road...it is a departure from your beach scenes and it is an image that holds some sort of connection for me. A connection to my youth when time was spent in fields and not on beaches. Interesting how the childhood influences so much. I actually feel the feeling of loneliness from those days when I spent a lot of time by myself. I was content most of the time but there was an aloneness there as well...


Sequences seem to be almost a scientific research of the reality around us.
An investigation and inventorying of the visual phenomenons making our reality.
But sequences are also about emotions.
About how one feels when in a particular situation.

The sequence that triggered the response of the fervent and loyal blog reader was made in 1978 in Sweden.
While traveling there with the documentary filmmaker of the French television Bernard Martino.
A lifetime friend.
We had been visiting a rehabilitation clinic for drug addicts far away near the Norwegian border in the eternal singing forests of Sweden.
That had been impressive as was in fact the whole trip.
Traveling in an old Peugeot 404 from Paris to Stockholm carefree like in Dennis Hopper’s movie “Easy rider”.
Having experiences along the way that are remembered forever.

However, contrary to the characters in the movie “Easy rider”, drugs were not used.
Bernard Martino and the pioneering photographer were not into that at all.
Their consciousness and awareness were already that much open that enough impressions were obtained naturally not to need drugs on top of that.

That policy, completely natural and pure, resulted in being able to experience things from within the core of the own being.
And right there, like in the response of the fervent and loyal blog reader, existed an aloneness that had started at a very early age.
Coming to the surface as a memory but also as a possible state of being in the current life, when the old Peugeot stopped on that endless and deserted Swedish road.
Inspiring to take the camera and play with the situation.
To document and interpret the endless road and forest in a new and surprising way.
To offer the viewers later an opportunity to see and experience that road in a different way.
Like if the road and the forest are surrounding the person with a soft layer of being lost by belonging to aloneness.

The presence of absence.


To be in not to be.



Where the aloneness makes one all one.






.











1 comment:

Rajendar Menen said...

Aloneness is the essence of an artist. All great writers, painters and photographers need aloneness which is another reason they don't fit into the family or into society easily and can be misunderstood. I have spent most of my life in aloneness and love it. From that aloneness springs great creation.