PROJECT STATEMENT - COSMOS

I have an intense fascination for the concepts of home and of belonging.  Home is not a fixed place for me.  I have moved too often and not stayed in any one place long enough to feel that I am ‘from’ anywhere in particular.   And yet, I find I am very adept at creating a space for myself, wherever I happen to be, and with whatever means are at my disposal,to make myself feel ‘at home’ and as if I belong, right there, in that moment.

Thinking back to some of my childhood homes, within each I’d create a space – behind the sofa, in the cupboard under the stairs, under a table,hidden by a curtain, cushions in a corner, a hut, a hollow, a hallowed space for dreaming and contemplation, somewhere to read or draw or pretend that I was somewhere else.  A tiny declaration of territory.   A giant proclamation of possibility.

Even now, I can’t take a walk through the woods without assessing the gaps in the trees for their potential as dwellings.  Anything with edges and boundaries and openings seems to suggest walls and windows.  And when I am behind my walls and windows, what do I do but dream of what lies beyond them.  A wall, a barrier, does more than separate what is in and what is out, who is welcome and who is not.  It delineates between what is and what could be, what we know and what we could learn, who we love and who could still love us, where we are and where we might go.

I luxuriate in the magic watching the light change, the dust dancing with each breath; in the warmth of the floorboards; and drowsily listen to conversations in other, less magical corners of this abode.  Magic.  It’s almost the opposite of order and structure and yet, perhaps, we need one to have the other. Photography seems magic to me.  We catch light in a box and make pictures that we can take away from the place we made them.  Pictures with edges and borders and limits of their own which prompt us to wonder what lies beyond.   

Magic makes photographs of things we can’t see with our eyes or touch with our hands because they only exist in the realm of the little black box with a lens for a window.  We can create new dens, new forts, new caves, new palaces, new dreams and a new cosmos from what we have to hand.

All we need is a camera.