An Ode to the Girl Who I Could Never Write
She dances away with the camera in her hand, taking sporadic photographs of me as I chase her down the corridor. Faded memories, flashes of what happened, the moment she shoots me with the camera, with her words only silently trailing behind us, I lose track of her. She disappears into the ether, into the nothingness, into the cracks of the wall. She squeezes her being through the crack, only to reappear with the camera in her hand, pointing at me, shooting…
In this series of photographs, I again meet the girl I could never write, this time with a camera in her hands, pointed at me as if I was the one in the wrong. Please join me as I share with you these photographs of a girl I could never write.
She hid herself behind a painting, one that she made herself in a sleepless dream, or a dreamless sleep. Her mind concretised, painted on a canvas that had only written words plastered on it. She removed the words by painting over them, layering her dream paint stroke after paint stroke. It became a pain(t)ful dance to witness as the tears started to mix in with the paint. The painting became her being, her flesh and blood, and she emerged from the canvas drenched and reeking of life, of essence, of something otherworldly. She emerged naked with the truth plastered all over her body.
Only then did she start to chase me around with the camera in her hand again, only then did she manage to shoot me with her camera. The mechanical eye turned around, gazing at me, enveloping my being, sucking the life from my very bones. I could no longer look into the void, into the eye, into the god-like negation; there was nothing, and there will be nothing. Life is contained in a moving photograph, and it does not reproduce beyond mere copies of the copies.
She turned around and walked away, as if nothing happened. As if she did not see me through her mechanical eye…
Alas, I have yet to write her fully, I am yet to capture her essence on my canvas.
I hope that you enjoyed these experimental photographs of the girl I could not write!
For now, happy photographing.
All of the musings and writings are my own, albeit inspired by the girl I could never write wielding her camera. The photographs are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Nikkor 50mm lens.