“The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
There was ‘Nothing There’.
I went for a walk into the hills of a desert on a volcanic Island through the middle of the day. I wanted to find an alternative connection to landscape. Apparently totally barren I discovered that it was not and the experience led to a deep change and focus in my photography practice.
In terms of traditional, popular subject matter there was nothing there. It was a featureless, colourless, monotonous landscape. Certainly not a traditionally British Landscape of grand aesthetic value. This wilderness was of limited visual appeal, arid, desolate making the decision to explore with my camera seem a strange one. But was it? After the early photographers, such as TH O’Sullivan, I set off to discover and photograph my own new world.
Don’t Go. There is nothing there
“and if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed with familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.” – Pico Lyer
Journeys come in many forms. Physical and psychological they cross boundaries of the mind and of space; last the length of a daydream or span a lifetime. Every experience in our life takes us on a journey, we move from one place to another mentally or/and physically. There is nothing in life without a journey. Sometimes this journey will be a rich and pleasant one; sometimes bland; sometimes dangerous. But at the end of each journey there will always be change; a broadening of horizons; a widening of experience; a change of location; a change of direction. This ‘journeying’ happens every minute of every day in our lives but how often do we really pay attention, reflect and listen to the stories that our individual lives tells us? All too infrequently?
Narrative and storytelling binds us further to human responses to forms of travel. The need to tell stories and relive that experience recounting a past event and recreate that emotional response. Savouring that moment of memory and transience from one place to another. Perhaps a result of limbic memory use aiding survival; remembering safe routes of passage to plentiful food sites. This in built mechanism of basic human nature now provides a valuable source of inspiration. Landscape and humanity intrinsically bound in an experiential event.
Point the way; they will gather and watch from lofty perch; pacified
”One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.” – Andre Gide
Taking journeys and creating stories are at the centre of much of my work. Derived mostly from walking and the experience of crossing spaces and exploring places. The mind also wanders and in the midst of this experience further metaphoric journeys are created.
Imaginative journeys where the mind explores, leaving the constraints of the physical space and entering the realms of the unreal, of imagination and creation. Unburdened of logic and formula one can move freely into the worlds created for us by others. We are at the mercy of the artist to influence where they wish to take us. Each story is individual to the viewer and the depth of this experience dependant on the viewers receptiveness to the narrative.
This series was the first in which I attached narrative, using imagery and title in an attempt to combine physical experience and personal imagination to create a story. My movement through the Landscape was reasonably short. Just a few hours but the resulting sequence of images sat with me for quite some time and eventually I shared these slowly over a 12 week period. There was a beginning and an end, a leaving and arriving with experience in between. Was this experience real? In part yes it was and in part it was imagined. Extending the journey, telling the story and opening myself to something new.
Embark with Apprehension and Exhilaration
”Not all those who wander are lost.” – JR Tolkein
Boundaries of nothing, transgression satisfies inquisitiveness
”Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than the things you did do. So throw off the bow lines, sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.Dream.Discover.” – Mark Twain
A beautiful shrub swaying in the breeze
”Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” – Albert Einstein
Exultation in a precipice; and now the void
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller
Natural barriers in decline
”Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind.” – Seneca
Meeting a tribal elder; origins of his species
”it is not the strongest or the most intelligent that will survive but those that can best manage change.” – Charles Darwin
Who does the pilgrimage serve?
“We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfilment.” – Hilaire Belloc
The weak sought solace in congregation
“I love to travel, but hate to arrive.” – Albert Einstein
Strength in adversity resulting in isolation
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” – Albert Einstein
Environmental oppression takes it’s toll, weary
“if you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.” – Cesare Pavese
Sensorial transposition; deep introspection and rumination
“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels of our personality and get into the forrest again, we will shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” – D.H. Lawrence
Everything is there if you open your mind to see
“The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust
Unless otherwise stated, all images and words in this article are © Stephen Segasby
