cast in abstractions
celebrations take the form
of the unrecognisable
destructed identities
transform into synthetic
reflections that bubble away
with every breath I take
An Ode to the Girl Who I Could Never Write
In a strange moment of absolute chaos, we took to our original positions and we drank from the glasses handed to us. It felt like a scene from a novel, one written by Kafka or Hesse, one in which the unknown remained the most beautiful abstraction, one in which you could almost lose yourself, but this did not last long. Soon, the very thing we found attractive and beautiful started to consume us, sucking the lifeblood and air from our existence. In true horror fashion, we started to consume ourselves.
Strange enough, everything becomes a photographic moment when you look through the camera's viewfinder. Bent down, in the photographer's position, the world looks wholly different, strange at times, recognisable at others.
In a recent turn of events, we continued to celebrate the strangeness of life, the thing we wake up to each and every morning.
After so much, we are still celebrating life.
After asking her hand in marriage, we found ourselves celebrating life, again, but this time with some champaign in our hands.
We saw this as another photographic memory, one we wanted to capture for eternity, and we walked outside to find the perfect backdrop.
From yellow flowers, to mountains illuminated by the last of the sun, we danced like children, we smelled of rosemary, and we took photographs of a bottle so that we might remember this day, this week, this eternity we promised each other.
The girl who I could never write, now dancing in front of me with a bottle of champaign, slowly materialised with every poem I ever wrote about her.
The girl I could never write morphed into existence, and became the girl I am now writing...
ourselves responding to
the situation around us
unfolding — folding —
in unpredictable ways
the girl I could never write
is now co-writing the new story
 |  |  |
|---|
to the end
we write our story
in cursive and bold
so that we might remember
the ever-changing world
We live in a world where everything is photographed. Everyone takes photographs with their smartphones of everything around them. Digital mementoes to which one will never return.
Some see this as a problem, but is that not the purpose of dairies and similar notes? We process life through the practice of memorising it, by turning these memories into realities. We take photographs, we write something, but we never return to these mementoes. They are not meant to be returned to, maybe in a distant future.
We process through writing, we process through the screen, the viewfinder. We see our own lives vicariously, from a safe distance, because life is too hard to comprehend without first filtering and distilling it.
In the end, she turned the camera around in a rare moment of transformation. Now I was the subject of exploration and analysis, now I became the centre of attention.
And so I find myself processing my own abstract celebrations, through a lens, a filter of my own making.
I photograph to understand, I view life through the various vicarious moments that somehow get stitched together to make sense.
What is photography other than a constant grasping at some meaning?
Maybe I am overthinking the process...
I hope that you enjoyed this series of ever-evolving photographs of the girl I could never write.
For now, happy photographing and keep well.
All of the musings and writings are my own, albeit inspired by the dancing girl in front of me. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and 50mm Nikkor lens.