Photography
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Were We Belong & Najima Series
When I began to take these photographs in December 2004, it was perhaps a reaction to my brother’s burning of numerous volumes of our family photograph albums, and also to the news that my grandparents’ house was due to be demolished.
For me the light in these pictures has an equal weight and presence to the figures and objects it surrounds. The sunlight coming through the bamboo bushes outside the window, the light of the naked bulb in my grandparents’ abandoned house, or the car headlights that illuminate my father’s frame have as much of a claim to life as the contents of the house or the figures of my parents.
Whether it is the house waiting to be demolished, or my parents occupying their space like strangers travelling to an unknown destination; the people, places and objects shown in my pictures gather remnants of light to themselves at the same time as the light clings to them for survival. Each element of each picture is, I believe, advancing towards the same moment, each on the brink of being absorbed into its opposite. I feel that every image here captures the last moment of something. The last gasp of darkness, light, objects and people resigned to their fate.
When I began to take these photographs in December 2004, it was perhaps a reaction to my brother’s burning of numerous volumes of our family photograph albums, and also to the news that my grandparents’ house was due to be demolished.
For me the light in these pictures has an equal weight and presence to the figures and objects it surrounds. The sunlight coming through the bamboo bushes outside the window, the light of the naked bulb in my grandparents’ abandoned house, or the car headlights that illuminate my father’s frame have as much of a claim to life as the contents of the house or the figures of my parents.
Whether it is the house waiting to be demolished, or my parents occupying their space like strangers travelling to an unknown destination; the people, places and objects shown in my pictures gather remnants of light to themselves at the same time as the light clings to them for survival. Each element of each picture is, I believe, advancing towards the same moment, each on the brink of being absorbed into its opposite. I feel that every image here captures the last moment of something. The last gasp of darkness, light, objects and people resigned to their fate.
