'In your soft talk'

'In your soft talk'

Dating back in Western Culture to the books ‘The Illiad’ and the ‘Anied’ which told stories of epic journeys across vast oceans. We, as humans, have always attached a mythical and symbolic importance to it. The sea is seen as a body of ceaseless movement and formlessness, of introspection and depth. Juan Eduardo Cirlot writes “it is a symbol, therefore, of dynamic forces and of transitional states between the stable and the formless.” Leo Frobenius sees it as a representation of our “collective unconscious” where “the sun of the spirit rises”.

It is of no wonder then, even in this day and age, that people are still drawn to the coast to sit and watch and wonder, to enter into a state of contemplation and stillness at its perennial surface. It is these people I have chosen to represent the often overlooked, romantic, introspective people that draw my attention, but pose only questions to me.

These photographs are my interpretations of such persons. Due to the problematic nature of the power struggle that is inherent in the photograph between the subject – photographer – viewer I have chosen to stage these episodes, in an attempt to allow the viewer to use the image as an object, to emancipate the spectator “to deny the corporeal energy that is meant to convey the here and now and transfer it into a mere image, by linking it with something she has read in a book or dreamed about, that she has lived or imagined” (Ranciere) The image then becomes a tool for contemplation, for personal interpretation, for meditation.

The title is a nod to Jack Kerouac’s poem ‘Sea – Sound of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur’ and also to the quiet voices of the characters to be interpreted by the viewer.

Images of the zine that goes alongside coming up soon