WHY?
Why do I photograph dusty roads, old buildings and ruins, dead trees…
Sometimes I can’t explain the pull of my subject, it might be my gut that tells me to stop, there is something special here. Othertimes it is as if the history of the place calls to me, a call I can’t ignore.
I can sit in front of an old, crumbling building and wonder… wonder about the people that built it, that lived their, that visited. What did they wear? What happiness and what sorrows happened on their road? And where are they now?
It makes me sad, but it makes me happy to think them back into life – even if it is my version.
And then when I take a photo it is as if to say, I hear you, you are not lost and forgotten. You didn’t toil for nothing. We can still hear your laughter echoing through the emptiness and we can see you sitting on your beloved stoep.
And why film? Maybe it is the romance that connects me to the time long gone or the alchemy that happens when I push the button and not being able to see what the result will be exactly. Most of the times it is exactly as I hoped it would be, but other times it is more. So much more, a happy accident.
But to me shooting on film fills me with so much happiness and passion.
The wait for it to be developed and then the child-like excitement when I get the scans back from the lab.
And then finally to have it printed on paper I see things I didn’t see at first – to touch the textured paper and to really connect with the image.
Alchemy || Passion || Nostalgia
