beyond Beyond

infinite and infinitesimal

 

As an image maker, using photography as a medium, I have situated myself in the heart of the rural Overberg fynbos region. I am privileged to come across rare and endangered species of flora and fauna.

 

I utilise a slow photographic process of long exposures with a continuously moving light source in creative documentation. I am in search of an essential yet elusive soul quality in everything I image.

 

Worlds within worlds open up to me through the macro lens. My work is an exploration of life and death on physical and metaphysical levels. I never actively kill but rather await serendipitous 'gifts'.

 

Beyond documentation, I fictionalise interspecies relationships, taking license to arrange my tableau mort.

 

This storytelling is presented as 'poetic ecstatic truth'. In this world I am the 'demiurge' (lesser god) re-animating life.

 

While three dimensional form features strongly in my work, an inner vision searches beyond form towards the void, where the universe pulses in and out of existence in ceaseless vibration.

 

I have titled this body of work beyond Beyond, inspired by the last line in the Buddhist Heart Sutra which poetically points to the path of awakening and the futility of using language to understand essential truths.

 

I aspire to expand concepts of our context. The Hubble telescope has imaged more and more of the seemingly boundless universe. I have used these awe-inducing composite photographs to situate my flora and fauna theatre interplays, fluctuating between the polarities of the infinite and infinitesimal, with an eye on the indivisible whole.

 

At this historical juncture, the imbalances human destructive forces have wreaked are noticeable. I feel it is important to give image and agency to the natural world we are destroying. Beauty is a useful tool for inspiring value and emotional connection.

 

If anyone viewing my creations can come away with a sense of marvel, mystery, deeper connection, greater affection or empathy for the creatures and plants we share our greater context with, then I feel I have made a tiny contribution to a hopefully expanding awareness of our mutual interconnectedness.

 

In essence we are all differing versions of spiralling DNA