eventual stagnation
continual forgetfulness
we abstain from moving
toward the end
with all movement
confronting the destination
that awaits
all that breathes
all that sees
all that feels
A Series of Photographs With an Old Nikon NIKKOR 50mm f/1.8 AI Lens
Movement I | Movement II | Movement III | Movement IV | Movement V | Movement VI | Movement VII | Movement VIII | Movement IX | Movement X | Movement XI | Movement XII | Movement XIII
It has been a year since my last movement post. I feel that the series contradicted itself. Movement ceased, and death crept into the bones of the series that declared itself a continual series of iterations. But here I am again, or here the series returns with some new movement, spasms of near death, the jerking of muscles.
In the mountains, I looked down and I saw the pieces of driftwood, old dying plants, the fynbos stumps that reminded me of all the previous encounters. The resemblance of dreams - horrors, nightmares - that haunt my conscious memories. I can live through these pieces of wood that lay innocently, only until they are viewed through the lens, the 50mm lens, do they become the nightmarish images that conjure up landscapes and decaying bodies and all the obscenities that plague me.
I love through these moments, these movements, that I capture, worlds that I create with the click of the shutter.
I am the creator of worlds.
My mind becomes a hellscape - a purgatory - through which I need to move. poems of macabre, of moving fear and anxiety, drenched in the blood that runs through my body. I am the creator of these atrocities, these monstrosities, these horrors. They live inside of me, they are me. I am them. These obscenities become Rorschach tests that I cannot decypher, they become complex puzzles that eventually unravel into chaotic and disordered thoughts that cause my own insanity to surge through the walls that I tried to erect around it.
But now, like the burst dam walls, the madness flowed into a seemingly coherent stream through my mind and the dead timbre became moving images that whispered infinitely long and dense stories. I heard the life stories of countless beings, trying to make sense of the same horror, the same insanity, the same infinite movement that drowned their every attempt at catching a glimpse of reality.
Walk with me through the insanity of these photographs and appreciate the strange movement embedded in their horrific cracks and creases.
scabbed licking
dried out tongue
choking on words
that once symbolised love
now only knows death
between the cracks
sudden movement
that defies logic
my skin
becomes a desert
for your thoughts
my fingers
around your throat
sucks the very life
from the words
that suffocate
your desires
my grasp
becomes webs
of horror
that envelopes
stretching out
towards your face
a road that leads nowhere
but demise
through my fingers
weak and brittle
dry and crumbling
my touch becomes death
and my words wisdom
that contributes nothing
I contain the world
I become their vessel
I am a god
that hides in the cracks
of my creations
They say let your creations age in the drawer and it will return bountiful. Or something along those lines. At least, that is what I have heard. For a year I have not yet returned to the movement series, the very series that started my more abstract writing. Just like the movement I described, the series moved into hiatus.
But this did not mean that it died completely, it shifted a gear or two. Now, I have returned to these moving monsters of mine.
And I hope that you enjoyed this absurd journey with me!
For now, happy photographing and keep well.
All of the musings, meanderings, and writings are my own, albeit inspired by my own hellscapes. The photographs, or hellscapes, are also my own, taken with my Nikon D300 and Nikkor 50mm lens.
