The Return
The Return is a composition of a long photographic ritual. I took a picture of the sky every morning from the same spot, with the same framing and camera settings for about seven months. Once in a while, an evening image leapt into the sequence, but the essence of the piece is the disciplined act of returning. This return is physical and it is energetic. Most importantly, it is a spiritual return to the same point. This repetition ritualises the camera, making it a daily form of devotion, embodying the process of observing, staying constant and finding presence.
Conceptual Focus
The astrological practice that is behind this project use the fact that the planetary aspects and transits change every day. What happens “above” has an effect on us, though we do not always sense it. This is based on the Hermetic teaching that the heavens affect but can’t control us and also echoes Seymour’s (1992) concepts that positions of planets and stars could influence our Earthly actions. The sky looks the same; our inner worlds do not. The photographs serve as metaphors for this disjunction. The photos record the Earthly conditions of a blue sky, after clouds have rolled in, or overcast, or simple emptiness. Through this piece, The Return showcases the hidden labour of spiritual experience. The daily shifts are invisible, the inner movements are permanent, but not visible to others.
The Apparatus
From rectangles to openings: uncovering the mechanism used for gatekeeping - At first, the images show standard rectangular photographs, but their shape has another meaning. Photographs are originally circular exposures that are hidden by rectangles. I find this masking similar to how organised religion and some spiritual systems (New Age) “crop” Divine experience, mediating, filtering or gatekeeping direct access. The camera became a metaphor for institutional apparatuses. The tool we are told must acquire to have access to the Divine. Instead of realising that the spiritual connection is not external. The series of images reveal that when images are reshaped into circular ones, their completeness is not lost. It seems as if the images are a fraction of a bigger picture (represented by the whole sky). When they are viewed together, it reveals the spiritual seekers’ journey.
